South Korea’s Pan Ocean has fixed the zeroes on a press release, which had led many last week to blithely report it was in possession of the largest shipping contract the world had ever recorded.
Last week, Pan Ocean issued a release to the Singapore Exchange that it had agreed with key client Vale to shave off a sizeable portion from a consecutive voyage contract it inked with the Brazilian miner in 2009, citing lower than anticipated fuel bills.
The contract of affreightment signed on September 21, 2009 called for the shipping of 238.4m tons of iron ore from Brazil to China over a 19-year period, marking one of the biggest shipping deals ever won by a Korean shipping firm.
The initial deal was worth $5.8bn, however, Pan Ocean stated in the initial release it was worth $58bn and it had agreed to knock $13bn off the deal, something it amended today, to the $1.3bn figure reported by Splash last week.
