The South Korean shipping company HMM has doubled its capacity in the last five years by building numerous new ships. However, it exceeded the million mark with one charter.
For the first time in its history, the South Korean shipping company HMM has exceeded the capacity limit of 1 million TEU. The main reason for this was an ambitious newbuilding program.
In April 2020, the container ship “HMM Algeciras” with a capacity of 24,000 TEU entered service for the shipping company. This is the first of a total of twelve Megamax newbuilds with conventional propulsion that have since been delivered. The expansion was continued in 2021 with eight further 16,000 TEU ships in the NPX class.
The newbuilding boom is far from over: HMM recently announced its next order worth $2.8 billion. It comprises a series of twelve container ships of 13,000 TEU each, as well as two VLCC-class tankers. The ships will be built by Hyundai Heavy Industries and Hanwha Ocean. Here, too, a trend is continuing: all of HMM’s newbuilds have been built by South Korean shipyards. One reason for this is that HMM, as a partially nationalized shipping company, supports the national shipbuilding sector. The container giant currently has a total of 17 ships and almost 200,000 TEU in its order book.
Limit exceeded through chartering
According to the industry service Alphaliner, the company was rather cautious when it came to chartering ships. However, the charter of the Seaspan-operated “Seaspan Brightness” (10,010 TEU) for the Far East-India-Mediterranean service TIM pushed capacity over the 1 million TEU mark. It is one of five Seaspan “Savers” vessels that will be sailing for HMM. The vessels were originally intended for an eight-year charter with Japanese shipping company MOL, but were later transferred to ONE and extended for at least four years. ONE finally handed over the charter to its “Premier Alliance” partner HMM.
The shipping company’s total capacity currently stands at 1,007,180 TEU and has a market share of 3.0%. This puts the South Korean company in 8th place in the global ranking of container shipping companies, far ahead of the Taiwanese shipping company Yang Ming (9th place, 724,000 TEU). However, the leap to 7th place is likely to be a long way off despite the ambitious newbuilding programs: Evergreen Line remains there with a capacity of 1.936 million TEU, closely behind ONE (2.035 million TEU). The upper ranks are still occupied by Hapag-Lloyd, Cosco, CMA CGM, Maersk and the industry giant MSC. The latter is currently moving towards a capacity of more than 7 million TEU with an order book of around 2.2 million TEU, which is almost three times higher than HMM’s orders – and the trend is still rising.
