Seoul: Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) has won an order from France’s CMA CGM to build six 14,000 teu ships for delivery from late 2016 through to mid-2017. CMA CGM’s backlog of ships to deliver now stands at 13 from Korea, China and the Philippines.
CMA CGM has been playing catch up with the two lines ahead of it, MSC and Maersk, in the global container fleet rankings. Including newbuilds it has around 1.75m slots, according to Alphaliner, some 840,000 slots shy of MSC and 1.29m slots behind the leader, Maersk.
For HHI the order is a big win as it is a long way short of hitting its annual sales target. The early delivery slots also show how HHI’s orderbook has contracted dramatically in recent months, largely thanks to the decline in offshore orders following the oil price drop.
