Chinese Taiwan shipping company Franbo Lines breaks the tradition of ordering ships from Japanese shipyards, and chooses to place an order for shipbuilding with a shipyard in China for the first time. This new shipbuilding program has been approved by the board of directors of Franbo Lines.
Franbo Lines has ordered four 63,500 dwt Ultramax bulk carriers from a mainland Chinese shipyard, with deliveries of the new vessels expected to begin in 2025, the company said in a news release on its official website on April 15th. The Chinese mainland shipyard is Jiangsu Haitong Offshore Engineering Equipment Co.,Ltd.(JSHT), according to Trade Winds. The price of the deal has not been disclosed.
The new bulk carriers will be built on traditional bunker fuels in accordance with the International Maritime Organization’s Tier IIINOx standards and have already negotiated charter agreements with shipowners in Singapore and Hong Kong, China. Franbo Lines said that JSHT would be able to start delivery in 2025 by realigning its dockyard, at a time when the majority of shipyards around the world are already scheduled for delivery until 2027.
At this stage, Franbo Lines is accelerating the renewal and expansion of its fleet to meet the market demand through the construction of environmentally friendly vessels that comply with the IMO’s emission reduction regulations. Up to now, the shipping company has 18 bulk carriers, and will receive two 40,000 DWT bulk carriers in June and September this year. Two new vessels will be received in 2025.
Chairman of Franbo Lines, Mr. Cai Bangquan, said the company expects to build at least 20 new vessels in the next 10 years and believed that a total fleet size of 50 vessels would be more in line with the economy of scale. This year, the company plans to sell two 10,000 dwt or so old vessels, which could fetch between US$3 million and US$4 million, based on the current used vessel market forecast.
Franbo Lines analyzed in March when announcing its 2023 results that the current crisis in the two major canals has caused vessel detours to reduce vessel turnover, reducing market capacity supply and raising freight rates. As the proportion of bulk newbuilding orders is only 8.8%, which is at a historically low level. Clarkson predicts that the annual growth rate of bulk carrier capacity supply will not exceed 2% in both 2024~2026, and the industry supply order is healthy.
JSHT is located in the first class open ports, the provincial key shipbuilding park—Rugao port. With a total land area of 500,000 m2, has 660m outfitting quay. JSHT promotes modern shipbuilding model, has one dry dock of 400m*50m; with one 1,100ton and one 300ton gantry crane; 10,000ton outfitting quay with two 4075 cranes; has pretreatment workshop, steel-cutting workshop, block workshop, piping workshop and painting workshop etc., the total production workshop area is 100,000 m2, with other 1000 sets advanced equipment.
