Major Carriers Still Hungry for Mega Container Ships

The containership orderbook this week stands at a 15-year high, equivalent to nearly 36% of the active fleet, proving demand for large vessels is far from over.

Maersk Line continued to make efforts to narrow its gap with MSC, with orders for eight 18,600 teu LNG dual-fuelled ships from New Times Shipbuilding, priced around $193m each and expected to arrive between 2029 and 2030.

With a length of 366 metres and a breadth of 58.6 metres, the new box ships will be shorter than the industry’s largest, which can reach up to 400 metres in length. Maersk said the more compact design had been a deliberate choice to support “flexible deployment across multiple tradelanes”.

The carrier’s head of chartering and newbuilding, Anda Cristescu, said: “Deployment flexibility has been a key factor in our decision-making.

Although these vessels are large, they offer greater flexibility than the largest ships being built in our industry. This provides us with multiple deployment options across both our current and future network.”

Including newbuildings chartered from tonnage providers, Linerlytica data this week shows Maersk has 71 vessels under construction, amounting to 899,835 teu – but this still far lags market leader MSC, which has more than 2.4m teu on order.

Meanwhile, Japanese trading group Mitsui is believed to be behind an order for a 13,000 teu pair at Samsung Heavy Industries, at $162m each.
These will be the biggest in Mitsui’s fleet on delivery by May 2028.

It is unclear which carrier will charter them, although ONE is known to be gearing up for a huge number of newbuilding orders.

Hai An Green Shipping, an affiliate of Vietnamese operator Hai An Transport and Stevedoring, has exercised options for two 7,100 teu ships at Dalian Shipbuilding, adding to a pair commissioned in November. The price was not disclosed, but according to Clarksons, prices of similar newbuilds are around $90m.

Alphaliner added that the first two vessels were expected in 2028 and the optioned pair could arrive in the second half of 2028/early 2029.

The ships, expected to be conventionally fuelled and scrubber-fitted, will be by far the largest in Hai An’s fleet, and they are expected to be earmarked for the charter market. Hai An Transport operates a network of container services within Vietnam, as well as between Vietnam, Singapore, and China. It also acts as a tonnage provider, having fixed nine of its vessels to other operators.

Finally, Venergy Maritime, the recently created boxship arm of Greek shipowner Vyron Vasileiadis’s V Group, has exercised options for two more 1,900 teu ships at CSSC Huangpu Wenchong Shipbuilding. Priced around $32m each, they are expected to hit the water between 2028 and 2029.

MB Shipbrokers commented: “The general picture is that demand, surprisingly, is still firm, with the pipeline of new projects rather long. And we expect additional new orders to be confirmed within February.”

Major carriers continue investing in mega container ships, underscoring their appetite for scale in sea freight and project logistics. These ultra-large vessels reflect long-term confidence in global trade growth, even as market volatility and capacity management remain ongoing challenges.

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