China’s COSCO Shipping Corp was the top buyer of large container vessels over the last five years in the sales and purchase market, acquiring 14 vessels for US$1.78Bn since 2015
Operating to 356 ports, the Shanghai-based shipping company has a fleet of 403 vessels, including COSCO Shipping Aries, the first 20,000-TEU container ship built in China.
According to UK-based ship valuations firm VesselsValue, other companies rounding out the top 10 buyers of large container ships (>10,000 TEU) over the past five years by spend were:
The data was compiled just prior to mid-December.
While COSCO Shipping was the biggest buyer over the last five years, Seaspan was the leading purchaser in 2020, spending a total of US$0.8Bn in secondhand transactions.
Before Covid-19 broke out, Seaspan bought four 11,923-TEU container ships, built in 2017 and 2018 at China’s Jiangsu Yangzijiang for a total price of US$367M. The transaction included a long-term charter from Pacific International Line. Seaspan, a wholly owned subsidiary of Atlas Corp, has a fleet of about 123 vessels, with a total of 1,023,000 TEU.
Additionally, Seaspan spent US$146M to buy two 13,371-TEU box ships from Peter Dohle. A charter with Hapag-Lloyd was part of the deal for those ships, built in 2010 and 2011, at South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries.
More recently Seaspan spent US$88M each on two 11,923-TEU container vessels built at Jiangsu Yanzijiang in 2018.
Other big spenders in the S&P market in 2020 were:
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