A mystery European owner has axed an order for four boxships at Hyundai Heavy Industries citing financial difficulties.
The owner will have to cough up penalty payments as a result of the quashed order, the shipyard wrote in a regulatory filing in South Korea on Friday.
The order was worth KRW 477bn ($424.79m today), the shipyard wrote, but as it was originally penned in June 2007 is likely to have been worth much more. That Korean won amount on 15 June 2007 came to $512.35m.
HHI did not name the owner concerned or the size of the ships which have been chopped. By way of reference only, Clarksons’ database lists Singaporean owner NOL with a quartet of 10,000-teu ships ordered at the yard in July 2007 at $125m a piece making it likely the axed orders are of this size.
French owner CMA-CGM is listed on Clarksons’s database as having a number of vessels both slightly smaller and larger than 10,000-teu on order at HHI and associated yards with contracts dates either side of June 2007.
News of the order cull was accompanied by a bullish forecast from the yard for the year ahead. HHI hopes new orders placed in 2011 will soar 54% to $26.6bn on the back of continued global economic growth and a resumption of oil and gas exploration activities. Sales next year could rise 20% to KRW 26.9 trillion, it added.
The Korean bagged new orders of $17.2bn this year, a 61% increase from a dull 2009. Sales were only up 6.1% to KRW 22.4 trillion.
