Posted on 09 Jun 2022
June is already shaping up to be a big month for South Korea's shipbuilding industry, with two of the sector's leaders Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME) and Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (KSOE) both announcing orders for new vessels for exports within days of each other. The orders will eventually translate to new ship plate sales for the country's two domestic integrated mills, POSCO and Hyundai Steel, and for the Japanese steelmakers for whom Korea is a major export market.
On Tuesday, DSME announced that it had received orders for four 174,00 cubic-metre-class liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers from the Korean consortium handling LNG exports from the huge North Field Expansion Project being promoted by Qatar Energy in the Middle East. The vessels will be built at DSME's Okpo Shipyard and delivered to ship owners by Q1 2025, the company said in a statement.
Qatar, the world's largest LNG producer, is in the process of expanding its LNG production to 126 million tonnes/year by 2027 from the current 77 million tonnes, the statement said. The South Korean consortium, composed of Pan Ocean Co, SK Shipping Co. and H-Line Shipping Co, will deliver LNG for Qatar Energy, Qatar's state-owned oil and gas company.
Korean media reports say DSME's order is the first result of a $19 billion contract that it and two other Korean shipbuilding giants – Hyundai Heavy Industries and Samsung Heavy Industries – signed with the Qatar energy giant in June 2020 to construct more than 100 LNG vessels through 2027.
DSME, the global leader in LNG carriers, has the capacity to build 20 LNG carriers per year.
So far this year, DSME has secured orders for a total of 24 ships and related projects worth about $54.7 billion including16 LNG carriers and six container ships, the statement noted, nearly double the $27.4 billion it had received in the same period of last year.
Meanwhile, KSOE announced on Wednesday that it had signed a contract worth $736 million with an unnamed European shipping company to build six container carriers.
Under the deal, KSOE-affiliate Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries will construct the 8,000 TEU (20-foot equivalent unit) container ships and deliver them to the undisclosed shipper by the second half of 2025, local news reports say.
To date this year, KSOE has clinched orders to build 105 vessels worth $12.9 billion, achieving 74% of its yearly order target of $17.44 billion.
KSOE, the sub-holding company of global shipbuilding giant Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings, has three shipbuilding affiliates – namely Hyundai Heavy Industries, Hyundai Mipo Dockyard, and Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries.
Besides the Korean mills, these orders will be welcomed by the Japanese integrated mills such as Nippon Steel and JFE, Mysteel Global notes. The most recent Japan Iron & Steel Federation data show that between January and April this year, Japan exported some 366,000 tonnes of heavy plates (including ship plate) to South Korea, a near three-fold jump compared with the first four months of last year.
Source:Mysteel Global
