Bangladesh: WMS to Build Container Ship for Bancan Shipping

Western Marine Shipyard has signed a new agreement for newbuilding of one more container ship on 12 May 2013. This ship will be constructed for Bancan Shipping.

The deal was signed by the Managing Director of Western Marine Shipyard Mr. Sakhawat Hossain with the Chairman of Bancan Shipping Mr. Mohammed Ilias on behalf of their respective organizations.

The ship will have a capacity of 160 TEUs and will operate to carry containers from Chittagong Port to Pangaon Inland Container Terminal (PICT). The government has issued 50 licenses for inland container ships which shall ply in this route. Western marine has already secured orders for 6 ships from the aforementioned licences. Last month, Western Marine signed a deal with Neepa Paribahan Ltd & Mir & Islam Enterprise for building 2 container ships. Recently, the shipyard has enhanced its capacity and the management plans to build at least 20 of these container ships. The ships will be constructed under class Germanischer Lloyd, thus ensuring best quality.

These ships will cost BDT27.5crore and they have been designed uniquely for the inland and coastal route of Bangladesh. The newbuild container ships are highly sophisticated and require complicated calculation of stability unlike other types of vessels like cargo ships or tankers. So far, Western Marine has built nine container vessels (multi-purpose) which have been exported to Europe.

These ships will be serving for the PICT, which the Government of Bangladesh has developed in Dhaka to facilitate increased trade within the country. The ships will make a major contribution to the country’s economy for port service enhancement and at the same time they will play a major role in reduction of traffic density in highways by transferring the mass imported goods by river.

Statistics say that last year the Chittagong port received 15lac TEUs of containers, a figure which is also growing 20% per annum and it will reach an optimum level of 30lac in the coming years. 90% of these goods are transferred to various destinations within the country either by rail or road. The new 50 container ships for PICT will be able to carry 2.5lac TEUs per year. According to the present momentum at least 100 container ships will be required to meet the growing volume of containers received by the Chittagong Port.