Contships Orders Up to 30 1,300 TEU Container Ships from Chinese Shipyard Guangji

CLC Newbuildings, a subsidiary of Contships Logistics, signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with Hubei Guangji Green Energy Shipbuilding Group for the construction of up to 30 container ships with a capacity of 1,300 TEU. Of the total, 10 units were firmed up, while the remainder correspond to two option blocks of 10 ships each.

The vessels will be based on the ContshipMax CV1300 design, developed together with the Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute (SDARI), with an actual capacity of 1,324 TEU including 340 reefer plugs. They will be equipped with Mitsubishi Tier III main engines, advanced low-pressure SCR technology, Daihatsu generators, a shaft generator and an energy-saving devices package, designed to optimize short-sea shipping operations.

The units will be built at the shipyard that Guangji recently launched in Wuxue, on the Yangtze River, in partnership with Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding & Offshore Project Management. Splash 247 noted that no prices or delivery dates were disclosed, and that if all options were exercised the program would exceed Contships' current fleet, made up of 27 feeder vessels.

According to Splash 247, this is the largest international contract secured to date by Guangji, a Chinese state-backed shipyard that began exporting this year with smaller deals signed with Emarat Maritime, Songa Box, Wealth Holdings and Marfret. The Wuxue shipyard is being developed with an investment of RMB3.5 billion ($488 million), has ten berths and a projected annual capacity of up to 1 million deadweight tonnes; before the agreement with Contships, its overseas order book already exceeded RMB4 billion ($562 million).

The new building program comes after Contships sold 15 vessels during 2025 and another five in the first half of 2026, transactions that generated $59 million this year and left the fleet at 27 units by the end of June. The shipowner also allocated $72 million in 2025 to the purchase of five secondhand feeders -two of 2,000 TEU and three of around 1,300 TEU- and closed the first half of 2026 with $249 million in cash and time deposits, plus a contracted revenue backlog of $240.7 million, with active charters with CMA CGM, ZIM, COSCO, X-Press Feeders and Unifeeder.

Nikolas Pateras, founder and CEO of Contships Logistics, stated that the newbuilding campaign of up to 30 vessels in China represents a new chapter in the company's history, with the goal of becoming the world's largest independent owner of feeder container ships between 1,000 and 2,000 TEU.