Western Marine Shipyard has signed a new agreement for newbuilding of two container ships.
These ships will be constructed for Neepa Paribahan Ltd and Mir & Islam Enterprise.
The deal was signed by the Managing Director of Western Marine Shipyard Mr. Sakhawat Hossain with the Managing Director of Neepa Paribahan Ltd Mr. Mujibur Rahman Chowdhury & the Managing Director of Mir & Islam Enterprise Mr. Mir Mahmood Ali on behalf of their respective organizations. The ships will be having a capacity of 160 TEUs of container & will operate to carry containers from Chittagong Port to Pangaon Inland Container Terminal (PICT).
The government has issued 50 licenses for inland container ships which shall ply in this route. Western marine has already secured orders of 6 ships into their basket from these. Recently the shipyard has enhanced its capacity & they plan to build more 20 container ships. The ship will be constructed under class Germanischer Lloyd ensuring its best quality.
Each of these ships will cost BDT25 crore (around $3.2 million) and they have been designed uniquely for the inland & coastal route of Bangladesh. Newbuilding of container ships are very much sophisticated & requires complicated calculation of stability unlike other types of vessel like cargo ships or tankers. So far Western Marine has built nine container vessels (multi-purpose) which has been exported to Europe.
These ships will be serving for the PICT which Bangladesh government has developed in Dhaka to facilitate increased trade within the country. The ships will make a major contribution in our economy for port service enhancement & at the same time they will play a major role in reduction of traffic density in highways by transferring the mass imported goods by river. This way for the first time container ships will be plying in our inland channels, which had never been experienced before.