Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering seems to be closely approaching its yearly order aim for this year with scoring another contract to build Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) from its US-based customer.

The global shipbuilder announced on December 16 that it had signed an agreement to construct five 300,000 dwt VLCCs with Scorpio Tankers of the US.

The contract is valued at around $500m in total and the newbuildings are planned to be built at Daewoo’s Okpo yard for delivery in the first half of 2016 (till February 1).

According to the Korean builder’s regulatory filing, the agreement was signed on December 13 with a contract value at around KRW 498.6bn. This corresponds to around $473.28m in dollar value, or approximately $94.66m apiece.

Each VLCC has 336m of length with 60m of breadth, capable of carrying around 300,000-ton crude oil. It will become an advanced eco-friendly and high-efficiency Eco-ship, with equipped with efficient engine and various fuel-saving technologies.

Particularly, this means a lot for being the first VLCC order of the US-based operator. So far, Scorpio has focused on medium and small-sized crude carrier, product carrier and gas carrier but it is now able to advance into very large crude carrier market through the latest contract.

Selecting Daewoo as the first partner is considered to be a result of confidence accumulated. Scorpio and the Korean builder have maintained close relationship through signing agreements for four Product Carriers and three Very Large Gas Carriers in the mid of this year and so on amid market depression.

Meanwhile, so far this year, Daewoo has won around $12.5bn new orders for 49 units of vessels and offshore plant, achieving around 96% of its yearly order target, $13bn.