Hapag-Lloyd secures funding for construction of five 10,500 TEU ships

Yesterday, Hapag-Lloyd signed a credit contract with a bank consortium for over 372 million USD with a run time of 12 years. The company wants to use the loans to fund five new ships, which were ordered in April 2015, and their delivery should follow between October 2016 and May 2017. The total investment volume is on average a three-digit million US dollar sum.

The five ordered ships are to be deployed mainly on the South America routes and have a capacity of 10,500 standard containers (TEU). With respectively 2,100 spaces for cooled containers (“Reefers”), the ships are especially well suited for transporting perishable goods. With the investment, Hapag-Lloyd intends to expand its position as one of the largest reefer-carriers in the world.

© Hapag-Lloy
The bank consortium is led by consortium leaders Credit Agricole, DNB, HSBC and UniCredit. Because the investment was placed at a Korean shipyard, among others, export credit insurers K-sure and KEXIM declared themselves as prepared to provide guarantees for Hapag-Lloyd, and with this securing the overall financing.

At the same time, Hapag-Lloyd decides to increase the revolving credit line at the funding bank consortium from 95 million USD to 200 million USD, to strengthen their liquidity reserves to attractive financing conditions.

Based on the latest ship funding, Hapag-Lloyd has also successfully renegotiated the terms for the ship fundings that were already in place. Altogether the company has succeeded in reducing their interest burden for the remaining running time of this loan by around 40 million USD.

“We have managed to secure attractive conditions for our new ships,” Nicolas Burr, Chief Financial Officer at Hapag-Lloyd, emphasizes. “Based on the newly negotiated funding, we can simultaneously reduce our interest burden for existing arrangements, and gain more financial flexibility with the heightened liquidity commitments.”

Source: www.hafen-hamburg.de