Hyundai Mipo Dockyard of Korea secured the nation’s first order to build full reefer container carrier.
The Korea shipbuilding conglomerate announced on July 10 that the company had inked a contract to build three 770 feu full reefer container carriers priced at $165m in total from New York-listed Dole Food Company of the US.
The signing ceremony was held in LA where the headquarter of Dole is located, attended by president Choi Won-Gil from Hyundai Mipo and president Mr. C. Michael Carter from Dole.
The containership newbuilding each has 190m of length, 30.4m of breadth with 17m of height. Construction is scheduled to begin from 2014 for delivery from November, 2015, in order.
Particularly, the newbuilds are featured with a water cooling system which enables the vessel to transport fruits like banana, pineapple and etc. and various vegetables while keeping them fresh.
In addition, the vessel is planned to be adopted with a design capable of minimizing wave resistance along with an electronically controlled engine which automatically controls fuels depending on operating speed and surroundings, thus expected to increase fuel-efficiency.
In addition, the reefers are each to be installed with two large gantry cranes which will make handling cargo faster even at ports where there are no offloading facilities.
Meanwhile, the Korean shipbuilder gained orders for 75 vessels in total including 55 units of middle range PC, securing $2.5bn year-to-date, and currently achieved 79% of its annual order target ($3.2bn).