Hapag-Lloyd has commissioned the South Korean shipyard Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering to build six container vessels, each with a capacity of over 23,500TEU, which will be deployed on the Europe-Far East services of THE Alliance.
The container liner shipping company had already placed an order for six ships of the same size at the end of 2020. Thus, the fleet will be expanded by a dozen 23,500+ TEU vessels in total.
The newbuildings will be outfitted with a high-pressure dual-fuel engine that will be “extremely fuel-efficient”, according to the German carrier.
Their engine will operate on liquefied natural gas (LNG), but the vessels will also have sufficient tank capacity to operate on conventional fuel as an alternative.
Hapag-Lloyd is focusing on liquefied natural gas as a medium-term solution, as it reduces CO2 emissions by around 15-25% and emissions of sulphur dioxide and particulate matter by more than 90%.
The six additional ultra large container vessels (ULCVs) have been financed via a syndicated green loan in the amount of US$852 million that has a maturity of 12 years from the date of delivery.
The transaction was concluded in accordance with the Green Loan Principles of the Loan Market Association (LMA) while also being verified by an independent expert in the form of a secondary party opinion of the DNV, according to a Hapag-Lloyd announcement.
Additionally, the credit facility is being backed by the Korea Trade Insurance Corporation (K-SURE), and the syndicate consists of 10 banks.
“With this investment in the additional newbuildings, we want to take another step in the ongoing modernisation of our fleet – in terms of both ship size and sustainability,” commented Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, and went on to add, “At the same time, we want to meet the persistently high demand and reduce our slot costs.”
