Car Carrier’s Newbuild Program Now Totals 12 Vessels, First Delivery Slated for 2024
Breakbulk specialist Höegh Autoliners is expanding its fleet once again after opting to manufacture another four new multi-fuel and net zero carbon ready Aurora-class vessels.
The Norway-based carrier, which operates a fleet of 40 pure car and truck carriers, or PCTCs, said it had exercised an option with China Merchants Heavy Industry to construct the ships, billed as the largest and most environmentally friendly car carriers ever built.
The move boosts the number of Aurora-class vessels in Höegh Autoliners’ newbuild program to 12, all of which are being built at CMHI’s shipyard at Haimen in China’s eastern Jiangsu province.
The first of the 12 vessels is slated for delivery in July 2024.
“We have the option to build four additional vessels (vessels 13-16) and have slot reservations for additional four vessels (vessels 17-20),” Höegh Autoliners said in a filing with the Oslo Stock Exchange.
The Aurora-class vessel has a capacity to hold 9,100 car equivalent units, or CEUs. The ship’s multi-fuel engine can run on marine gas oil and liquified natural gas or can be modified to use zero carbon fuels such as ammonia or methanol.
The vessel, the first in the PCTC segment to run on zero carbon ammonia, has been designed by Deltamarin, a subsidiary of China Merchants Group.
Höegh Autoliners, with its headquarters in Oslo, ships some two million CEUs as well as other rolling and static cargo every year. The carrier, targeting net-zero emissions by 2040, has already cut its carbon intensity by 37 percent, and is in line to meet the IMO’s target of at least 40 percent by 2030.
Höegh Autoliners is a regular exhibitor at Breakbulk Europe. Next year’s event at Rotterdam Ahoy will take place on 21-23 May. For regular updates on the event, click here.
