On May 15th, HD Hyundai Samho delivered 13,000 TEU methanol dual-fuel powered container ship “CMA CGM Argon” to CMA CGM.
The CMA CGM Argon is 335 meters long and 51 meters wide, which is equipped with a methanol dual-fuel engine. Compared with traditional fuels, clean methanol is expected to reduce 99% of sulfur oxides, 80% of nitrogen oxides and 25% of carbon emissions. The ship is one of the 12 13,000TEU container ships ordered by CMA CGM at at Korean shipyards.
In February 2023, CMA CGM placed an order with HD Hyundai Samho for 12 13,000TEU methanol dual-fuel powered container ships worth approximately US$2 billion. The first ship, “CMA CGM Iron”, will be delivered in March 2025 and is scheduled to be deployed on CMA CGM’s CIMEX1 service, which connects Asia with the Middle East Gulf region. The remaining 10 ships are named after elements in Mendeleev’s periodic table, namely CMA CGM Cobalt, Platinum, Mercury, Helium, Krypton, Thorium, Osmium, Silver, Copper, and Gold, and are expected to be delivered in 2025 and 2026.
As the first container shipping company in France and the third in the world, CMA CGM currently operates more than 650 ships with a total capacity of 23.6 million TEUs. In April this year, Beihai Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, delivered the last of the 10 5,500TEU series container ships to CMA CGM; in the same month, Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation, delivered the 24,000TEU liquefied natural gas (LNG) dual-fuel powered ultra-large container ship “CMA CGM SEINE”, which is the first ship of the four ships of the same type ordered from Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding.
In terms of new ship orders, CMA CGM has ordered as many as 24 LNG dual-fuel powered container ships from two shipyards in China and South Korea this year, namely 8+4 from Jiangnan Shipyard and 12 from HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, with a capacity of 18,000 TEU, all of which are of LNG dual-fuel design.
Among them, the cost of Jiangnan Shipyard is around $208 million, which is expected to be delivered between 2028 and 2029, with a total order value of nearly $2.5 billion; the cost of HD Hyundai Heavy Industries is about $215 million, which is scheduled to be delivered by December 2028, with a total order value of about $2.58 billion. The total value of the two orders exceeds $5 billion.