Samsung Heavy Industries to build six large container ships for Evergreen
Samsung Heavy Industries, a shipbuilder in South Korea, has won a $920 million order from Evergreen, a Taiwanese container shipping company, to build six large container ships, the world’s largest in terms of twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) capacity.
Samsung Heavy said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that it would build 23,000 TEU ships capable of carrying 23,764 containers. The vessels would be 400 meters long, 61.5 meters wide and 33.2 meters high. The shipbuilder set a record in July by delivering a ship capable of carrying 23,756 containers to Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A. (MSC), a Swiss-based shipping line.
TEU is an inexact unit of cargo capacity often used to describe the capacity of container ships. It is based on the volume of a 20-foot-long (6.1 m) intermodal container, a standard-sized metal box that can be easily transferred between different modes of transportation, such as ships, trains and trucks.
South Korean shipyards have developed eco-friendly ships as the amount of sulfur emanating from ships should be reduced from 2020 under new rules imposed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), a U.N. maritime safety agency. Natural gas has been recommended as a proven commercial solution to meet ever-tightening emissions requirements.
Samsung Heavy has said its technological prowess in the eco-friendly ship market was proven through the delivery of LNG fueled tankers which can effectively respond to regulations on sulfur oxide emissions. The shipbuilder said its accumulated order so far this year stood at about $5.1 billion to build 11 LNG carriers and other ships. Samsung Heavy’s target for 2019 has been set at $7.8 billion.
