Taiwan's Yang Ming Marine Transport is set to order five 15,000-teu neo-panamax container ship newbuildings worth up to $1bn.
The company's board of directors has approved the contracts that are part of its fleet expansion and renewal plans, according to a regulatory filing.
TradeWinds is told that Yang Ming has not officially floated the tender for the neo-panamax vessels as the company's board of directors has not decided if the ships should be powered by LNG dual-fuel or conventional fuel.
"Yang Ming's BOD [board of directors] will be making the fuel choice in February's meeting and, once that is decided, we expect the company to put out the newbuildings tender," the source said.
Several shipbuilding sources think only four shipyards — Japan's Nihon Shipyard and South Korea's Hyundai Heavy Industries, Samsung Heavy Industries and Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering — will be participating in Yang Ming's newbuildings tender.
They think shipyards in China will probably be left out because of the strain in the cross-straits relations.
"Yang Ming is semi-government owned," a shipyard manager said.
"The company will probably have to wait till 2025 or 2026 to take delivery of the container ships as shipyards' orderbooks are fully booked till early 2025."
Shipbuilding sources following Yang Ming's newbuilding activities said the liner company has scaled down the number of container ships that it originally wanted to order by at least half due to the high capital expenditure.
"Yang Ming thinks the current newbuilding prices are too expensive and delivery dates for the vessels are too far forward ... hence they decided to go for five vessels only," a source said.
"We are expecting shipyards to be quoting between $180m and $200m each for LNG dual-fuel ships and around $165m apiece for scrubber-fitted conventionally fuelled vessels."
Yang Ming's original newbuildings plan called for 10 to 15 container ship newbuildings to replace vessels it had chartered from Seaspan Corp.
But with the change in the newbuilding plan, shipping players believe the liner company will extending the charter of some of Seaspan's vessels.
Container ship observers said Yang Ming's initial newbuilding plans also included a series of ultra-large container ships (ULC) of 24,000 teu.
"Last year, it asked shipyards for quotes for five to six 24,000-teu vessels, but it seems to have lost interests for this ship size," the shipyard manager said.
Yang Ming is one of the partners in THE Alliance — which involves Hapag-Lloyd, Ocean Network Express (ONE) and South Korea’s HMM.
The Taiwanese liner operator is said to be the only member in THE Alliance that is without ULC tonnage.
HMM is operating 12 ships of 24,000 teu that were delivered in 2020, while Hapag-Lloyd has 12 dual-fuel ULCs under construction at DSME with delivery set for 2023 and 2024.
ONE has chartered six 24,000-teu newbuildings from Japanese tonnage provider Shoei Kisen on a long-term basis. The vessels are under construction at Imabari Shipbuilding and due for delivery in 2023 and 2024.
