Seaspan: Fuel-efficient Ships Key to Success

Gerry Wang said fuel efficiency also helps reduce emissions

Hong Kong-based containership leasing company Seaspan Corporation [NYSE:SSW] (Seaspan) will continue buying new ships with lower fuel consumption to improve its position in the market, CEO Gerry Wang told Bloomberg News in a video interview.

"We don't have enough fuel-efficient ships given the rise in oil prices," he said.

"We would want to have more fuel-efficient ships.

"That's part of the modernisation that we've been going through."

Wang said the company has ordered 15 large containerships with capacities of 14,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) in recent weeks and plans to order more this year.

"Each ship will cost over $100 million dollars," he said.

"This is highly capital-intensive: small players cannot do it."

Wang said Seaspan benefits from being  a large company with significant cash to spend.

"We're well positioned," he said.

"We've been waiting for this moment for a long time."

Asked about emissions concerns in Hong Kong and elsewhere, Wang said reducing fuel use also helps with those issues.

"As soon as fuel efficiency is taken care of, other things are taken care of accordingly," he said.

Wang said Seaspan is largely focused on the biggest shipping routes, between Asia and Europe and Asia and North America, because of the size of its ships, and he said he is optimistic about both routes.

"The United States has been stronger over the past 12 months but I'm very confident Asia-Europe is coming back," he said.

Seaspan recently announced that it had ordered five fuel-efficient containerships to be used by Yang Ming Marine Transport Corporation, and it said in November that it was concentrating on buying more such ships because of the "attractive ship acquisition environment."