COSCO Shipping plans to invest 4.9 billion dollars to build 32 ships, becoming the world's largest container shipping company?

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COSCO Shipping needs new shipbuilding, but it may not be for the first place in the world.

According to Nikkei Asia, COSCO Shipping Group in China is planning to invest 4.9 billion US dollars to expand its fleet and become the world's largest shipping company.
The Japanese media reported that COSCO Shipping Group will allocate funds to build 32 container ships from 2023 to the end of 2025, expanding the fleet capacity by about 580000 TEU.
The media said that as of the end of June this year, COSCO Shipping had operated 512 container ships, with a total capacity of about 2.92 million TEU. Without considering the ship capacity dismantling, this batch of new shipbuilding will increase the company's transportation capacity by about 20%.
According to Nikkei News, COSCO Shipping hopes to become the largest shipping company on the planet through this order.
However, this statement is a bit puzzling. If you look at the transport capacity of all the fleets of COSCO Shipping Group, the sum of the transport capacity of its container ships, oil tankers, dry bulk ships and various special transport ships has become the world's largest shipping company.
If we only look at the capacity of container ships, even if we increase the capacity by 580000 TEU, COSCO Shipping cannot become the largest container shipping company in the world.

Statically, according to the latest data of Alphaliner, the largest container shipping company in the world is MSC Mediterranean Shipping, which currently operates a container fleet with a total capacity of 4486848TEU. In addition, the company has 114 new ship orders with a total capacity of more than 1.5 million TEU.
At present, COSCO Shipping operates a container fleet with a capacity of 2873535TEU. At present, it has 34 orders, with a total capacity of about 590000 TEU.
This means that with the transportation capacity of 580000 TEU, COSCO Shipping cannot become the world's largest container shipping company for the time being.
From this point of view, it is clear that the habit of foreign media to add some weird "big stuff" when reporting for duty at home has not changed.
Methanol dual fuel is selected for sustainable development
According to Xinde Maritime Network, a more credible news is that COSCO Shipping is planning to invest about 2.9 billion dollars to order a series of 6 23000 TEUs of methanol dual fuel and another batch of 9 15000 TEU container ships (15 in total) using traditional fuel but methanol ready.
According to the new ship broker, each new ship with 23000 TEU of methanol dual fuel will cost at least 230 million dollars, while each new ship with 15000 TEU of traditional fuel that can use methanol will cost about 170 million dollars.
For example, Xinde Maritime Network previously reported that "Maersk is going to take another step! Another 20 methanol fuel ships will be ordered", "Note: CMACGM4+6+6 large orders of multi type containers are coming! 6 ships use methanol for the first time", and Maersk and Dafei have previously announced that they have ordered large container ships.
If the above information is true, this is the first time COSCO Shipping has chosen to order a methanol fueled ship.
In addition, Xinde Maritime Network previously reported that "Xie Chunlin, chairman of China Merchants Shipping, visited Gu Jinsong, chairman of COSCO Shipping, and discussed a major event". In August this year, when Xie Chunlin, chairman of China Merchants Shipping, went to Guangzhou to visit Gu Jinsong, chairman of COSCO Shipping, the two sides proposed that methanol fuel be the main research direction of future clean ship fuel, and jointly contribute to the national "dual carbon" strategy.
In February of this year, the green methanol fuel powered VLCC ship type design scheme jointly developed by China Shipbuilding Group and COSCO Marine Energy Transportation Co., Ltd. won the AIP principled approval certificate independently issued by DNV and CCS classification societies.
As can be seen from the above, it is clear that China's two major shipping central enterprises will choose methanol as the green fuel in the next stage.
About why COSCO Shipping skipped LNG and chose methanol fuel directly. Some insiders said, "The price of LNG is very high, while China's infrastructure for LNG injection is still limited." "The construction cost of LNG dual fuel ship is higher than that of methanol dual fuel ship, which is also easier to build."
As the Nikkei News reported, COSCO Shipping's new shipbuilding order is to compete for the world's first name. The report also said that if COSCO Shipping orders new ships, it may bring the consequences of excess transportation capacity to the world shipping industry.
However, some brokers in the industry say that large liner companies such as Maersk and COSCO Shipping need to update their fleets with greener ships to reduce carbon emissions. In addition, they need to reinvest their profits to avoid excessive tax increases.
At the end of August, COSCO Shipping Holdings, a listed company under COSCO Shipping Group, released its financial report for the first half of this year. During the reporting period, the company achieved a total profit before tax of 93.545 billion yuan, up 95.83% year on year; The net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 64.722 billion yuan, an increase of 74.46% year on year, making it the best performance in the same period in history. In order to better feed back the shareholders of the Company and improve the return on investment of shareholders, the Company distributed a total cash dividend of 32.344 billion yuan, accounting for about 50% of the net profit attributable to the parent company in the first half of the year.
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