OOCL Places Orders for Seven 23,000 TEU Containerships

Updated: November 19, 2020 (Originally published November 3, 2020)

Hong Kong-based container shipping company Orient Overseas Container Lines has placed shipbuilding orders for seven additional 23,000 TEU megaships at Chinese yards.

The shipbuilding contracts, worth more $1.1 billion in aggregate, were announced Tuesday in a stock filling by Orient Overseas (International) Limited, OOCL’s parent company. They contracts were signed with COSCO-affiliated shipyards in Nantong and Dalian, which will construct three and four vessels each, respectively.

Delivery is anticipated for the third quarter of year 2023 and third quarter of 2024.

The contracts build on OOCL’s order for five 23,000 TEU ships placed in March 2020. For those, Nantong is constructing three of the vessels while Dalian is constructing the other two. Delivery is planned to begin 2023.

At 23,000 TEU capacity, the vessels will be the largest in OOCL’s fleet, overtaking its six G-class ships which clock in at 21,000 TEU. The G-Class ships were ordered in 2015 and but a follow on order for additional ships never materialized due to poor market conditions at the time followed by COSCO’s proposed $6.3 billion takeover of OOIL. The merger was completed in mid 2018 and integrated the fleets of COSCO and OOCL, helping form what is now the world’s third largest shipping group.

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