Swinging Huge Deal

STX Offshore and Shipbuilding corners order for 10 super-class container vessels for $1.4 bln

STX Offshore and Shipbuilding Co. has secured an order for 10 container ships valued at $1.4 billion, the largest single order for new ships so far, from an European shipping firm, the company said
Each super-size container vessel is 13,000 TEU class, 365 meters in length, 48 meters in width and 30 meters tall with its deck the size of three and half football fields, the company said. Each container can load up 13,000 20 ft. containers, and is the largest order for such vessel in a time of economic slowdown around the world which is more surprising.
Officials of the company said the 10,700 TEU container vessel that Daewoo Shipbuilding got from NOL in Singapore was the largest thus far for Korean shipyards, but the STX order surpassed it. They said the container vessels will begin to be delivered to the shipping firm from the second quarter of 2013 after being built at the Jinhae shipyard of the company.
The European shipping firm that placed the order has a fleet of many types of cargo ships from bulk cargo ships, oil tankers, chemical product carriers, LPG tankers, containers and ships for transporting cars －a total of 226 ships truly a global merchant fleet operator, the officials said.
They said they had to be very selective about getting ship orders as the shipping industry recovers from slump and orders for new ships started to come in and the container ship order was among one of the best they had.
They said they got the order because of STX Offshore and Shipbuilding’s extensive experience for building environmentally friendly vessels, which was the strongest point they had going at the time of getting the order.
The company got the EEDI certificate issued by the German shipping authorities on ships that reduce Co2 in their exhaust fumes on the 13,000 TEU container vessel delivered to a Greek shipping firm, NIKI Shipping recently.
The plan to install the AMP system on the new container vessels this time so that they can use power from the harbor they are being anchored to reduce Co2 and other environmentally friendly equipment to further cut the amount of fuel such as the highly effective rudders, they explained.
They also said their plan to design the ships good enough to pass through the Panama Canal helped them to get the order.
In the meantime, STX Group signed an MOU with Alwatania Group of Saudi Arabia, to build a plant to produce a poly-silicon and linear alkil benzene(LAB)
At the STX Namsan Tower on Oct. 7. Chairman Kang Duk-soo, and Chairman Lee Hee-beom of STX Energy and Heavy Industry joined their counterparts Chairman Omar Suleiman Al Lazhi in signing the MOU worth $1.1 billion in total, the group said.
Officials of the group said the plants capable of producing 6,000 tons of poly-silicon and 100,000 tons of LAB will be built in the Yabu region in west Saudi Arabia. Poly-silicon is a major material for producing solar power plants, while LAB is a petrochemical material used in making a chemical detergent.
STX Heavy Industry will take charge of the project and complete it by 2014. Al Lazhi Group is a financial group in Saudi Arabia with a huge influence in the region and include the Alwatania Group as an affiliate in various businesses. RADIC is the investor in the project for the group and STX Group is likely to get a big help from the MOU in doing business in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East as a whole, the officials said.
STX Business Group has started a full-scale overseas resource development business, one of its major growth engines.
STX Energy acquired a 100 percent stake in Maxhamish gas field located in northwest Canada from EnCana, the largest gas company in Canada, for approximately 174 billion won on Aug. 26.
The possible reserve of the Maxhamish gas field, which is larger than the whole area of Seoul City, is 120 billion cubic feet (equivalent to 20.83 million barrels of oil). STX Energy expects it will achieve a turnover averaging 45 billion won annually for more than 30 years from the gas field.
“The acquisition of the this gas field is significantly meaningful in that STX has came to the forefront as an enterprise with operational rights, which directly manages oil and gas fields, instead of its previous overseas resource development policy oriented to simple equity investment,” said Lee Byung-ho, President of STX Energy. He added, “STX plans to accelerate its participation in operational businesses by further acquiring gas and oil fields in North America and Australia.”. nw

Chairman Kang Duk-soo of STX Group.