OOCL said it contracted with Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding on Dec. 14 for construction of two new container ships with capacities of 8,888 20-foot-equivalent container units.
The Hong Kong-based shipping line said it is ordering the ships to accommodate the growth in world trade.
The new orders are the first that OOCL announced since one of its executives said earlier this month it was considering ordering new ships in a range from 8,000 TEUs up to 13,000 TEUs in size.
Stephen Ng Siu-kow, OOCL's director of corporate planning, said the carrier would use the larger ships in this range on the Asia-Europe trade.
It could use the new 8,888-TEU ships it ordered this week on the trans-Pacific or the intra-Asia trade, which cannot yet handle ships as large as 13,000 TEUs.
The Journal of Commerce Online