Capital Containers inches up feeder ship newbuilding haul in South Korea

Evangelos Marinakis-controlled Capital Containers Ship Management Corp has bumped up its haul of container feedership newbuilding orders in South Korea by adding a further three newbuildings worth some KRW 222.4bn ($158.7m) to bring its total investment in this ship sector in 2025 to almost $1bn.
Newbuilding sources said Capital has added two more 2800-teu container ships and one of 1,800-teu to its slew of orders at the yard.

This would give the company 19 feedership newbuildings at the yard worth almost $1bn in total.
Today shipyard holding company HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering said it had recently signed a contract to build three container ships. HD KSOE did not name the contracting party, simply describing them as “a shipping company based in Oceania”.

HD KSOE gave the total order amount for the three ships as KRW 222.4bn and said the vessels will be built by HD Hyundai Mipo.
It said they are scheduled to be delivered consecutively by the second half of 2027.

Capital, which had previously flagged up the under-investment in the feeder ship sector, currently has 10 so-called Chittagong-max boxships on order at HD Hyundai Mipo. The company kicked off with an eight-vessel order in April, added two more in July and has now tacked on a further pair to bring its on order total for this size to 12 ships.
The April vessels were priced at around $55m each with the two in July at closer to $57m apiece.
All the vessels, which will be fitted with scrubbers and designed with auxiliary power systems to allow for future installation of onboard CO2 capture technology, are for 2027 delivery dates.
Similarly Capital contracted six 1,800-teu container ships on HD Hyundai Mipo in April for handover dates in 2026 and 2027 and with the additional single vessel now has seven building in this size range.

This latest order would price these newbuildings at around $45m each.
These newbuildings will join private entity Capital Containers rapidly expanding fleet of 48 under construction and on-the-water vessels.
The company currently controls four 2,800-teu vessels and nine 1,800-teu ships which were delivered in 2023 and 2024.
When delivered all its newbuildings are handed over it will boast a fleet comprising 16 of both the 2,800-teu and 1,800-teu HD Hyundai Mipo design feeder ships which are said to offer 15-20% improved speed and fuel consumption to Chinese-built alternatives.
In addition to these Capital is building a further 16 LNG dual-fuel container ships of 8,800-teu. Ten of these are on order at HD Hyundai Samho in Korea with another six contracted at China's New Times Shipbuilding.

HD KSOE said that for this year to date the shipbuilding group has received orders for 93 vessels totaling $12.37bn.
The yard holding company said this achieves 68.5% of its provisional annual order target of $18.05bn.
It said that during 2025 so far the company has received orders for five LNG carriers, six LNG bunker vessels, eight LPG/ammonia carriers, two ethane carriers, 59 container ships, 12 tankers, and 1 product tanker.