Seaspan Corporation has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire two 15,000 teu scrubber-fitted containerships on long-term charter with a major liner.
While Seaspan did not identify the two ships, Splash can confirm the seller is Idan Ofer’s Eastern Pacific Shipping, who will have made a substantial profit from the sale of the pair, which are on charter to French line CMA CGM. The 2019-built vessels are worth in the region of $142m to $144m according to VesselsValue data, which also shows Eastern Pacific paid around $99m for the Hyundai Samho-built vessels.
“This transaction further demonstrates our consistent quality growth through our creative customer partnerships despite the market cycles. Seaspan’s fleet composition is optimized with each new vessel, enabling us to provide our customers with more scale, efficiency, flexibility and reliability. The additions of these high-quality vessels also extend our long-term contracted revenue profile. Together with our recent large number of upcoming newbuilds, we continue to consistently drive quality growth while further differentiating our fully-integrated service offerings and resiliency of our business model,” said Bing Chen, chairman, president and CEO of Seaspan.
Seaspan expects to finance the vessels from additional borrowings as well as cash on hand, and delivery is scheduled for late in the second quarter.
Seaspan’s global fleet consists of 127 vessels with total capacity of around 1,073,000 teu. Since December 2020 Seaspan has announced the addition of 17 newbuild vessels made up of five 12,200 teu, two 24,000 teu and ten 15,000 teu dual-fuel LNG vessels, which will add 289,000 teu extra capacity to the company’s fleet.
