Zodiac Maritime is exercising options for a quartet of newbuildings that would take its containership orderbook to more than $1.6bn.
Shipping market sources said the diversified Monaco owner is moving on options tied to contracts for 10 neo-panamaxes at South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering.
The four 15,000-teu ships the Eyal Ofer-controlled company is adding are poised for delivery in the first half of 2024, reflecting a shipbuilding market that has all but run out of containership berths for 2023 delivery.
The price for the latest vessels has not been revealed, but they are expected to cost about $110m each — estimated on the price Zodiac is reported to have paid for previous ships in the series, if they are booked with the same fuel specifications.
That means Zodiac is benefiting from a price that is well below current market levels, which have been driven skyward by a white-hot containership market.
It is unclear which charterers are in the frame to take on the ships. However, citing Zodiac’s conservative approach to fleet growth, sources said that if the shipowner exercises the options, it is because a liner operator has agreed to take on the vessels.
How the quartet will be fuelled is yet to be decided, the sources said. But the company is expected to be driven by charterer needs.
Zodiac executives declined to comment, and executives at DSME could not be immediately reached.
Forbes' latest rich list ranks Zodiac Maritime chairman Eyal Ofer among shipping's richest people.
Global rank: 197
Net worth: $11.3bn
Sectors: Shipping, real estate, technology, banking and investments
Age: 70
Residence: Monaco
The four vessels would add to a string of orders that have seen Zodiac invest at least $2.4bn on 23 newbuildings in the 15,000-teu range that started hitting the water in 2019.
Compared with their value today, those ships are comfortably in the money, as the shipowner locked them in before the latest asset value surge.
Zodiac is also awaiting delivery of one vessel of a similar size from Hyundai Heavy Industries, where it has ordered 13 ships at a price reported at slightly more than $100m each.
VesselsValue estimates all ships in the two series of neo-panamaxes from DSME and HHI are now worth a combined $3.13bn. Ordering one today would cost about $119m, it adds.
Zodiac’s orderbook to date, on top of an existing fleet of 47 boxships, makes it the third-largest non-operating containership owner in the world, according to Alphaliner.
As TradeWinds reported in February, Zodiac exercised prior options for four neo-panamaxes at DSME. The deal is characteristic of its preference for ordering series of newbuildings in steps, rather than in large, speculative swathes.
The DSME ships have been fixed to AP Moller-Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC). They are slated for delivery in 2022 and 2023.
Nine of the HHI ships are chartered to MSC. The rest went to Ocean Network Express, the Singapore-based joint venture of Japan’s three largest shipping companies, according to data from analyst Alphaliner and shipbroker Clarksons.
So far, all of the neo-panamaxes have been ordered to run on conventional fuels rather than LNG, but sources said Zodiac has opted for designs focused on fuel efficiency, making them an attractive piece of the fuelling puzzle for liner operators.
But they added that the shipowner is “agnostic to fuel type” and will order dual-fuel ships if charterers call for it.
And containership charterers are proving to want a mix of options within their fleets, while the jury is still out on future fuel options to improve shipping’s carbon footprint.
“Even the oil companies, the Shells of the world, have not been fully one solution,” a source said.
VLGCs on order too
The containerships are not Zodiac’s only vessels on order at DSME. TradeWinds reported in March that it has also booked three VLGCs at the Okpo yard.
The 91,000-cbm ships reportedly cost $78m each, with delivery scheduled for the second half of 2023.
The company controls 157 vessels, according to Clarksons. VesselsValue puts its fleet value at nearly $8.45bn, including newbuildings.
This story has been amended since publication to reflect the correct delivery date for the VLGCs and Ofer's status on the Forbes rich list.
