Yang Ming Marine Transport is first Taiwan shipping line to have LNG-powered vessels with five on order
Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp., the Taiwanese shipping company, said it had ordered five new liquefied natural gas-powered containerships.
Yang Ming said it had opted for LNG propulsion for its five new 15,000 twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containerships.
The decision was approved by the board last week and the neo-panamax vessels would have dual-fuel engines to run on LNG as well as conventional bunker fuel.
“Yang Ming will be the first shipping company in Taiwan that owns LNG-powered containerships,” said the company.
“In the spirit of environmental sustainability, Yang Ming is using LNG for the newbuilds to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 20 percent compared with using traditional fuel,” it added.
The state-owned Taiwanese carrier said it would disclose the other vessel specifications and any shipyard transaction details at a later date.
Yang Ming, which was founded in 1972, currently operates a fleet of 92 vessels with a 7.53-million deadweight tons and operating capacity of 668,000 TEUs.
The company is ordering the LNG-fuelled ships because of tighter laws from the International Maritime Organization and the European Union against ships using polluting fuels in ports in the EU.
Yang Ming said in a statement that it would concentrate its 2022 operations in North America and Europe with the expectation that freights rates and shipping demand in the markets would remain stable amid a decline in Covid-19.
The shipping line serves ports such as Antwerp, Hamburg and Rotterdam.
It added that the newbuild LNG-fuelled 15,000 TEUs ships were the most suitable for these markets.
While Yang Ming is headquartered in Keelung, Taiwan, it said it also operates numerous services that link Taiwan with mainland Chinese.
Other main container ports served by the company are in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.
