The world's largest shipping company, Mediterranean Shipping Company, has once again made a significant move, significantly increasing its investment in Chinese shipyards. In just over a year, Mediterranean Shipping Company has placed orders for a total of 86 LNG dual-fuel large and ultra-large container ships with Chinese shipyards, further consolidating China's global leadership position in the construction of green and high-end ships.
Recently, Mediterranean Shipping Company placed orders for 6 LNG dual-fuel 22,000 TEU ultra-large container ships with Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding and Hengli Heavy Industry. The total contract value is approximately 1.38 billion US dollars (about 9.906 billion yuan), equivalent to a single ship price of 230 million US dollars; among them, Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding has taken on 4 ships and plans to deliver them in the second half of 2028, while Hengli Heavy Industry has received 2 ships and plans to deliver them between 2028 and 2029.
As a reference, according to Clarksons' data, the new shipbuilding price of a 22,000/24,000 TEU dual-fuel LNG-powered container ship is approximately 273 million US dollars (about 1.958 billion yuan), which is basically the same as last year's 272 million US dollars.
Previously, Hengli Heavy Industry announced last week that it had received 2 LNG dual-fuel 22,000 TEU container ships, which is the subsequent ship of the 6 22,000 TEU ship order signed by Hengli Heavy Industry and Mediterranean Shipping Company in April this year.
Hengli Heavy Industry stated that this type of vessel has extremely high loading capacity and an advanced intelligent management system, representing the current leading level of container ship construction technology. It is equipped with LNG dual-fuel propulsion, which can significantly reduce carbon emissions and align with the global shipping industry's green development trend.
Including the latest order, Hengli Heavy Industry has received 28 orders for ultra-large dual-fuel container ships from Mediterranean Shipping Company. Through batch承接 construction, the company will effectively control construction costs, improve production efficiency, and further consolidate its competitive advantage in the global ultra-large container ship market.
It is worth noting that the dual-fuel engines of this series of ships are also independently manufactured by Hengli Heavy Industry, fully demonstrating the company's independent innovation ability in core equipment manufacturing and further enhancing product competitiveness.
At the same time, Mediterranean Shipping Company has upgraded 6 19000TEU dual-fuel container ships (ship numbers H1650-H1655) it ordered from Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding last year to 22000TEU. It is still uncertain whether Mediterranean Shipping Company paid additional fees for this upgrade. When it ordered these 6 19000TEU ships in June last year, the unit price was approximately 210 million US dollars.
In addition to the six orders from Hengli Heavy Industry and Mediterranean Shipping Company mentioned above, according to the data from Clarkson, in the past two months, Mediterranean Shipping Company has also ordered an additional six 21,700 TEU container ships from Changhong International, three 21,000 TEU ships from Han Tong Shipbuilding Heavy Industry, and three 21,000 TEU ships from China Merchants Heavy Industry (Jiangsu Province). All these new ships are powered by LNG dual-fuel.
The latest large order shows that Mediterranean Shipping Company has shown long-term support for Chinese shipyards. Although after the threat of imposing high port fees by the United States, some international shipping companies began to turn to Korean shipyards, Mediterranean Shipping Company has continued to order container ships from Chinese shipyards this year.
In June this year, Marie-Caroline Laurent, the senior vice president of Mediterranean Shipping Company and the head of government affairs and maritime policy, publicly stated: "In the era of energy transition, we will need new types of ships. Now, these new ships are largely built in China. China has the ability and technology, and we will continue to build ships in China."
According to Clarkson's data, since last year, Mediterranean Shipping Company has ordered a total of 86 large/super-large container ships from Chinese shipyards. All the new ship orders are for LNG dual-fuel vessels. Among them, 74 are super-large container ships of 20,000 TEU or above, with a total value of approximately 16.5 billion US dollars (about 118.436 billion yuan).
Last year, Mediterranean Shipping Company ordered 58 container ships from Chinese shipyards, with a capacity of 10,000 TEU or more. These included 10 21,000 TEU and 10 24,000 TEU vessels from Hengli Heavy Industry, 12 21,000 TEU vessels from Han Tong Shipbuilding Industry, 12 19,000 TEU vessels from Zhoushan Changhong International, 6 19,000 TEU vessels from Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding, and 8 11,500 TEU vessels from Penglai Jinglu Shipbuilding.
Entering 2025, Mediterranean Shipping Company's ship ordering pace did not stop. In February this year, Mediterranean Shipping Company signed another order of 4 21,700 TEU dual-fuel LNG-powered container ships with Changhong International. In April, Mediterranean Shipping Company ordered 6 22,000 TEU dual-fuel LNG-powered container ships from Hengli Heavy Industry. From June to July, Mediterranean Shipping Company successively ordered 18 20,000 TEU dual-fuel ships with Changhong International, Han Tong Shipbuilding Industry, Sinotruk Heavy Industry (Jiangsu), Hengli Heavy Industry and Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding.
It is worth noting that among the several shipyards that ordered new ships from Mediterranean Shipping last year, except for Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding which had previous experience in building ultra-large container ships, Hengli Heavy Industry and Han Tong Shipbuilding have never received orders for container ships before. Jinglu Shipbuilding has only built feeder container ships in the past, and Changhong International's largest container ship built before was only the 10 LNG dual-fuel 11,500 TEU ships ordered by Mediterranean Shipping in 2022.
This year, China Merchants Heavy Industry (Jiangsu) which received orders from Mediterranean Shipping is also the first to enter the container ship construction market, setting a new record for China Merchants Industry in container ship construction. According to Clarkson's data, apart from the orders from Mediterranean Shipping, China Merchants Industry currently has only 7 container ship orders on hand, all of which are contracted by its newly acquired Qingdao Shipyard (formerly Qingdao Shipbuilding Yard), including 2 6,014 TEU ships, 1 1,400 TEU ship, and 4 12,08 TEU ships. In addition, among its affiliated shipyards, only China Merchants Heavy Industry's Jinling Shipyard has built container ships, and the largest container ship built by Jinling Shipyard has a capacity of no more than 5,000 TEU.
The shipping company's fleet operates 927 ships, making it the first container shipping company in the world to have a fleet size exceeding 900 vessels. Its current fleet consists of 629 owned ships and 294 leased ships, with a total capacity of 6.72 million TEUs, a market share of 20.6%, and it is also the only container shipping company in the world with a fleet capacity exceeding 6 million TEUs.
In addition, Mediterranean Shipping Company has 129 new ships under construction, totaling 2.17 million TEUs, also ranking first globally. The proportion of its contracted orders to the existing fleet is approximately 32.3%, and the scale of its contracted orders alone exceeds the total fleet capacity of the sixth-ranked Japanese Ocean Network Corporation (ONE) in the world (about 209 million TEUs).