Seaspan Corp has put pen to paper for six container ship newbuildings at a shipyard under China State Shipbuilding Corp (CSSC)’s control.
The tonnage supplier has inked a renminbi newbuilding contract with Shanghai-based Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding for the series of boxships.
News of Seaspan planning to order six 13,600-teu newbuildings was first reported in TradeWinds in May this year.
At that time, the company was said to be in discussion with Hudong-Zhonghua for LNG dual-fuelled ships and that the vessels would be ordered against charter contracts from Ocean Network Express.
Now shipbuilding players said Seaspan and ONE have stopped the charter contract discussions.
CSSC disclosed that the six large Seaspan container ships at Hudong-Zhonghua will be fitted with scrubbers and energy-saving devices.
It is not known if Seaspan has secured employment contracts for the six new container ships.
The price for the conventional marine fuelled 13,600-teu vessels has yet to emerge. But one broker thinks Seaspan will be paying more than $150m per ship.
Chinese leasing house ICBC Financial Leasing is said to be financing the sextet.
Using Chinese yuan
Seaspan is no stranger to Chinese shipyards. It has close to 100 Chinese-built boxships on the water and about 45 newbuildings on order at shipyards in China.
All these existing boxships and newbuildings are said to be US dollar investments.
Some industry watchers think Seaspan’s renminbi boxships’ contract is a landmark development for the Chinese shipbuilding industry.
Very few foreign owners have ordered such large newbuilding projects there and used renminbi for payment.
There are suggestions that perhaps the renminbi’s status is growing as an international currency and there will be room for more companies to opt for renminbi-based contracts.
Banchero Costa analyst Ralph Leszczynski said a renminbi newbuilding contract is extremely unusual and thinks the order is linked to financing from Chinese financial companies or with long-term charters to Chinese companies.
“The role of the RMB as an international currency remains very small. It’s growing, but it’s like increasing from 1% of global trade to like 2%,” said Leszczynski.
“It’s unlikely to change anytime soon, given the existing capital controls which make it problematic to move money in and out of China, and the worsening geopolitical relations between China and the West. It’s still pretty much all in US dollars everywhere.”
Leszczynski thinks the Chinese shipyards would benefit from renminbi-based newbuilding deals as all their costs — worker salaries, steel and bank loans — are paid out in local currency.
