S.Korea’s HD KSOE bags $1.1 bn order to build LNG carriers

South Korea’s top shipbuilder HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co. (HD KSOE) said on Monday it has secured a $1.08 billion contract to build four liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers from a customer in Oceania, meeting nearly half its annual order target.

HD KSOE, HD Hyundai Group’s intermediate holding company for the shipbuilding business, said the price of each vessel with a 174,000-cubic-meter capacity hit an all-time high of $270 million. The previous record for a carrier with the same capacity was $265 million, according to the shipbuilder.

Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries Co., one of HD KSOE’s subsidiaries, is scheduled to build and deliver those carriers by January 2028.

HD KSOE, the world’s top LNG carrier manufacturer, has bagged contracts to build six of the vessels -- that carry the cleanest burning fossil fuel -- since the beginning of the year. The company inked deals to produce 39 LNG carriers last year, 45 carriers in 2022, 25 in 2021, and 21 in 2022.

So far in 2024, the company has secured orders worth $5.98 billion to build 46 vessels in total, including the latest LNG carrier contract, tentatively reaching 44.3% of its $13.5 billion target this year.

Those 46 vessels included 15 product carriers, 19 liquefied petroleum gas and ammonia carriers, one ethane carrier, two liquefied CO2 carriers and two tankers.

Write to Sang Hoon Sung at uphoon@hankyung.com
 
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.