STX’s Chinese unit wins $330M deal to build 4 vessels

STX Group, a Korean shipping and shipbuilding conglomerate, said yesterday its Chinese unit has clinched a $330 million contract to build four large container vessels.

Under the deal with China International Marine Containers, STX Dalian Shipbuilding will build the 9,200-TEU vessels at its yard in Dalian, a port city in northeastern China, and deliver them in 2014, the group said. TEU stands for Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit.

The latest contract came three months after STX Dalian Shipbuilding won an order from a European shipping company to construct 10 container vessels.

So far this year, STX Dalian Shipbuilding has bagged $2.2 billion worth of orders to build 39 ships, including 14 container vessels and 12 oil tankers.

The shipbuilder said it has a backlog of 80 vessels worth $4.4 billion, which will keep the company busy for the next two years.