On May 19th, Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding announced the successful signing of a letter of intent (LOI) for the batch production of 8,300 TEU class container ships and one 18,600 m3 LNG bunkering vessel.
It is reported that the shipowner of the batch container ships is Seaspan, the world’s largest independent container ship company. The shipowner has a good cooperative relationship with Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding. The two parties have cooperated on three 15,000TEU conventional fuel container ships, all of which have been delivered. In October 2024, they signed a contract to build six 13,600TEU conventional fuel container ships, which are scheduled to be completed and delivered between 2026 and 2028.
This type of ship is the latest generation of medium-sized container ships developed by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding. It takes into account the transportation tasks of both feeder routes and ocean routes. It is green, energy-saving, safe and efficient, demonstrating the company’s outstanding research and development capabilities in the medium and large container ship segment.
The 18,600 m3 LNG bunkering vessel was independently developed by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, and its overall technical level has reached the international leading level. It is currently the world’s largest and most advanced bunkering vessel V3.0. The vessel has a total length of 135.9 meters, a beam of 24.5 meters, a designed speed of 12 knots, and adopts the GTT MARK III FLEX liquid cargo containment system, with an evaporation rate as low as 0.16%/day.
The owner of this project is Spanish shipping company IBAIZABAL and the operator is TotalEnergies. This is the second cooperation between IBAIZABAL and Hudong-Zhonghua in the field of bunkering vessels.
In July 2024, IBAIZABAL as the shipowner and TotalEnergies as the operator signed a contract with Hudong-Zhonghua for 1+1 V3.0 version 18,600 m3 LNG bunkering vessels. The first vessel was classified as BV and is expected to be delivered by the end of 2026.