Cosco Container Lines has taken delivery of the biggest yet in its multiple series of ultra large containership orders.

The 21,000-teu Cosco Shipping Universe was handed over last week from Shanghai Jiangnan Changxing Shipbuilding on Changxing Island. The next three in the six-ship order already stand at the outfitting berths, with work proceeding night and day, and ­another hull is visible in dry dock nearing completion.

The record for the largest boxship built in China (busting the previous record, which was set very recently) is soon to be broken again.

“It always seems to go up by ­another 1,000 teu,” said Jiangnan Changxing technical director Hu Keyi, updating TradeWinds before a busy day of delivery festivities. His yard hosted Cosco executives and other guests including Chinese ­equity funds, which are equity partners on one or more of the six ships. The day’s events were captured by television crews for national and Shanghai broadcasters.

The Cosco Shipping Universe ­series overtakes a 20,000-teu six-ship series that a sister yard in the China State Shipbuilding Corp (CSSC) group, Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding (SWS), is turning out, also for Cosco.

The new 21,000-teu design by CSSC’s Marine Design & Research Institute of China manages to get one more tier of boxes inside the hold than the SWS series.

The two Cosco newbuilding programmes with different designs are the result of separate orders from the former Cosco and China Shipping groups before their 2016 merger.

Meanwhile, Jiangnan Chang­xing and another CSSC yard, ­Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, will soon enough top the record with 22,000-teu ships for Cosco’s Ocean Alliance partner, France’s CMA CGM. Those ships will be dual-­fuelled, with an 18,600-cbm LNG tank from Gaztransport & Technigaz underneath the deckhouse, in GTT’s first use of membrane containment system for a fuel tank.

The Cosco Shipping Universe is not the world’s largest containership, a record held since last year by South Korean builder Samsung Heavy Industries and Hong Kong owner Orient Overseas Container Line with a series of 21,413-teu vessels. Orders under way at DSME and SHI will soon top even that.

Hu and other Jiangnan Changxing officials acknowledge that the Cosco Shipping Universe series will do little better than break even ­because of the rise in steel prices since the ships were ordered.

And because of the dual-fuel specs, the coming CMA CGM series will be “more challenging for profitability” for Jiangnan and GTT.