Evergreen Moves Ahead with 20-Ship Fleet Expansion

The sixth largest container shipping company, Taiwan-listed Evergreen Marine, will acquire 20 container ships, each with 11,000 TEU capacity, according to a filing to the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

Evergreen is planning to construct eight ships of the ships at a cost of up to US$ 800 million and take on 12 with a long-term bareboat charter.

Data from global shipping consultancy Alphaliner has shown that Evergreen’s purchase will push its existing fleet and order book numbers to almost match that of Hapag-Lloyd’s current fleet size.

Lars Jensen, CEO, SeaIntelligence, recently forecasted the industry’s developments as far into the future as 2025 in his 'Liner Shipping in 2025' technical paper

Evergreen is considering five shipbuilders for its order —  Taiwanese CSBC Corporation, Japanese Imabari Shipbuilding and Japan Marine United Corporation, along with their South Korean rivals Samsung Heavy Industries and Hyundai Heavy Industries.

Six chartered ships and four newbuildings from the batch will be ordered by the company’s Panamanian subsidiary Greencompass Marine SA, while the remaining ships from the series will be ordered by Evergreen Marine.

Alphaliner recently reported that there will be a 5.6% growth in container fleet capacity in 2018 after orders placed in 2017 went up by 140% on the previous year to 671,641 TEU.

Read more: The CEO of Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and the President of Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha have released positive statements about what the future will hold for the two Japanese carrier lines in 2018 as they prepare to merge with Japan’s third largest container shipping company, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, to secure their profitability into the future