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Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) could order massive container ships that would be almost 50 per cent bigger than any ship in its fleet, a senior executive confirmed.
Such a move would reflect the expected long-term growth in demand in Europe for Asian exports.
Stephen Ng Siu-kow, OOCL director of corporate planning, indicated that the carrier was looking to bolster its fleet, reported the South China Morning Post.
Ng said: "We are looking at 8,000 TEUs and up to 13,000 TEUs, but we have not made any decisions on placing orders for these vessels yet.
The largest vessels now sailing in the OOCL fleet are 16 ships capable of carrying 8,063 TEUs that were ordered at the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard in South Korea at a total cost of US$1 billion. The last in the series, OOCL Luxembourg, was christened last April.
The container line also has six 8,888 TEU box-ships that were ordered from Shanghai's Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) in 2007 at an overall price of $723 million. Ng said these ships would be delivered between 2011 and 2013.
The current price of a 13,000 TEU container ship ordered from a South Korean shipyard is about $125 million.
The ships can only be deployed on Asia-Europe services because ports in the United States have restrictions on the size of vessels that can use the terminals. Similarly, while container volumes on intra-Asian trade routes are growing, operationally 8,000-13,000 TEU is too large for the trade.
Analysts at Macquarie Research and Goldman Sachs are forecasting a shortage of container ship capacity in 2012 as the construction and delivery of vessels lags the expected growth in container volumes.
Cargonews Asia
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