Since March 2025, the global new shipbuilding market has continued to be sluggish, coupled with the implementation of a series of U.S. sanctions against China’s shipbuilding industry, the industry has faced severe challenges. Against this background, Chinese shipbuilders still realized a major breakthrough.
Recently, Hengli Heavy Industries and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), a renowned European liner company, formally signed and put into effect a contract for the construction of six LNG dual-fuel 22,000 TEU container ships.
The U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has released a bill aimed at China’s shipbuilding and other related industries in an attempt to limit China’s influence in the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors. This move has triggered market turmoil, which, when combined with an already depressed newbuilding market, has challenged many Chinese shipbuilders. Overall, the global ship order book is in a significant decline since 2025.
Therefore, the order signed by Hengli Heavy Industries is particularly eye-catching. This type of LNG dual-fuel container ship belongs to the advanced green ship type, which is in line with the green development trend of the global shipping industry. This not only demonstrates the strong technical strength and construction capacity of Hengli Heavy Industries, which can meet the strict requirements of European shipowners for high-end, environmentally friendly vessels; it also reflects that the European shipowners have a high degree of trust in Hengli Heavy Industries, and still choose to cooperate with Hengli Heavy Industries in the unstable market period.
Hengli Heavy Industries has developed rapidly since it entered the shipbuilding industry in the summer of 2022. It is backed by Hengli Group, which has strong capital and resource integration ability, and can provide sufficient guarantee for the cooperation project. Especially at the beginning of 2025, Hengli Group invested nearly 10 billion dollars for the construction of new plant and dormitory of the shipyard, which lays the foundation for taking more orders.
In the container ship newbuilding business, MSC has placed a number of container ship orders with Hengli Heavy Industries, including 10 21,000 TEU and 10 24,000 TEU LNG dual-fuel ultra-large container ships, and the transaction amount reaches tens of billions of RMB. These orders not only bring considerable income for Hengli Heavy Industries, but also enhance its market position and technical level in the field of container ship construction, and promote Hengli Heavy Industries’ continuous innovation in green ship construction technology.
The signing of the order for the ultra-large container ship is of great significance to Hengli Heavy Industries, and this large order not only brings considerable economic benefits, but will also help the shipbuilder to move to a new level in terms of technological research and development and capacity enhancement.
In the context of rising global trade protectionism, the behavior of European liner companies to place orders in China undoubtedly boosts the morale of China’s shipbuilding industry, highlighting the resilience and competitiveness of China’s shipbuilding industry in the complex predicament, and is expected to promote the two sides to carry out more in-depth cooperation in the field of shipping, and help China’s shipbuilding industry to continue to expand the international market.