HJ Shipbuilding and Construction (HJSC) — formerly Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction (HHIC) — is poised to win its second newbuilding contract.
Shipbuilding sources said the reborn South Korean shipyard is close to signing a deal for four firm 6,000-teu container ship newbuildings worth about $292m in total — or $73m each — with a European owner.
The deal is for conventionally fuelled vessels.
Hamburg-based asset and investment manager MPC Capital is said to be in advanced talks with HJSC over the quartet for delivery between 2024 and 2025.
Should MPC Capital confirm the order, the newbuilding contract would be the second deal that it has sealed with the Busan-based yard.
Officials at HJSC were not available for comment.
Christian Rychly, managing director of shipping at MPC Capital, said: “We continue to see significant interest in 2023 and 2024 deliveries of container ship newbuildings by various charterers.
“On that basis, we are currently looking at a number of different projects but it’s too early to announce anything as no contracts have been signed.”
In October, MPC Capital ordered four 5,500-teu newbuildings reported to cost $260m.
At that time, the shipyard was still called HHIC although it was under its new owner — Dongbu Corp, an engineering and construction company.
MPC Capital's 5,500-teu newbuilding deal was HJSC’s first since 2014.
Last month, the German owner confirmed the order for the container ships and said the vessels would be “methanol-ready”.
MPC Capital said it has joined together with unnamed partners for the contracts. It added the ships have “state-of-the-art” specifications allowing for a reduction of 40% in fuel consumption compared to existing vessels.
They will be prepared for conversion to carbon-neutral operations using green methanol.
Rychly said at the time that his company is convinced “the demand for new container ships with favourable specifications, a low [fuel] consumption and high environmental ranking will increase.”
He added that the orderbook in this size of boxships is “fairly low and 80% of the vessels in the water today are non-eco ships”.
Revitalising Hanjin
Hanjin Heavy was the oldest shipyard in South Korea and was known for building boxships and vessels up to aframax size.
The shipyard went under its creditors’ management in 2016 due to operating losses and a lack of funds. Stiff competition from China and low shipbuilding prices led HHIC to stop contracting commercial ships and put its focus in building navy vessels.
A consortium led by Dongbu Corp and domestic private equity firm Echoprime Private Equity officially became the major shareholder of HHIC in September. It built up more than 66% of the yard's shares after buying stakes from eight banks, including state-owned Korea Development Bank and the Philippines-based BDO Unibank.
HHIC was renamed as HJSC last month.
