12 HMM Container Ships' Sticker Price $1.57 Billion

HMM announced Tuesday that it will pay $1.57 billion for 12 container ships that each can carry 13,000 twenty-foot equivalent units. 

The ocean carrier said it had signed the newbuild contracts with Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering and Hyundai Heavy Industries, both located in South Korea. Each shipyard will build six container ships, with all 12 scheduled for delivery in the first half of 2024. All will be installed with hybrid scrubbers and designed to be liquefied natural gas ready.

"Our newly ordered container ships will be fitted with the latest energy-efficient technologies," HMM, which also is headquartered in South Korea, said in a three-paragraph press release. "We expect these ships to give us strong environmental credentials as well as to provide us with the capacity and flexibility to get our customers' cargo to the right place at the right time."

Last year HMM launched 12 of the world's-largest 24,000-TEU container ships. On its maiden voyage in April 2020, the HMM Algeciras, the first of the 12 behemoths, carried 19,621 TEUs. The last of the series, the HMM St. Petersburg, departed the Port of Yantian in China in early October with 19,529 TEUs on board. 

HMM is taking delivery of eight 16,000-TEU container ships this year. The first, the HMM Nuri, was deployed in late March. The Nuri is deployed on THE Alliance's Far East-Europe 4 service, embarking from Busan, South Korea, and sailing to Shanghai; Ningbo; Yantian; Singapore; Suez Canal; Rotterdam, Netherlands; Hamburg, Germany; Antwerp, Belgium; Southampton, England; Suez Canal; Yantian; Hong Kong; Shanghai; and Busan. With port calls and without delays, the entire rotation takes nearly 85 days. 

HMM is a member of THE Alliance space-sharing cooperative with Hapag-Lloyd, Yang Ming and Ocean Network Express. 

Hapag-Lloyd last week said it had ordered six 23,500-TEU ships at a cost of $852 million. That doubled the order it had placed with Daewoo Shipbuilding last December. 

ONE also announced in December that it had signed a letter of intent with Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd. for a 15-year charter of six new ultra-large container ships each with a capacity greater than 24,000 TEUs. 

Last week Yang Ming conducted a naming ceremony for its latest newbuild, the relatively small 2,800-TEU YM Continuity. The Continuity will be deployed on an intra-Asia service. 

HMM Nuri slated to transit Suez Canal on maiden voyage

HMM's 12th 24,000-TEU container ship en route to Rotterdam 

Hapag-Lloyd orders 6 more 23,500-TEU ships at cost of $852M

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