Taiwanese line Evergreen has confirmed a major ship-building project which involves the construction of ten 23,000 TEU containerships at three shipyards, scrapping plans announced last month to charter up to 11 mega box ships.

The company will order six ships at South Korean yard Samsung Heavy Industries, and two ships each at China’s Jiangnan Shipyard and Hudong Zhonghua Shipbuilding. The total value of the orders is between $1.4bn and $1.6bn.

Evergreen said the decision was made after further evaluation of fleet expansion plans and the company believed that the new ship-building orders would further accelerate the fleet optimization.

These new ships will be the largest in Evergreen’s fleet and they will be deployed on routes to Europe and West America.

According to Alphaliner, Evergreen currently operates a fleet of 206 ships with a total capacity of 1.3m TEU, making it the seventh-largest liner in the world. The company also has an order of 58 ships with a total capacity of 336,544 TEU, accounting for 25.8% of its existing fleet capacity.