Samsung shipyard secures $2.5 bln order from unnamed European company

SEOUL -- Samsung Heavy Industries, a major shipbuilder in South Korea, has secured a contract worth $2.5 billion to supply block materials to a client in the Eurasian region. It marked the shipbuilder's largest single ship contract. Details were not disclosed, but the shipbuilder has teamed up with the Zvezda shipyard in the Russian Far East to take part in designing icebreakers.

Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) said in a regulatory filing on November 23 that the contract period is valid until December 2025. Russia, a major gas producer, aims to export LNG as much as Qatar. Russia's second-largest natural gas producer, Novatek, plans to start producing LNG at Arctic LNG 2. The project is expected to require a number of ice-breaking LNG tankers.

The deal raised the shipbuilder's backlog of orders to $21.1 billion and accumulated orders to $3.8 billion, or 45 percent of this year's target. SHI said it is expected to win additional orders related to large-scale LNG projects such as Mozambique and Qatar as well as container ships and crude oil carriers.

"We are making all-out efforts to link letters of intent, which have been signed, and additional options to actual contracts within this year," an unnamed SHI official said in a statement.

South Korean shipbuilders have sought orders for Russia's LNG project. In June 2020, Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine secured an order worth about 901.3 billion won from a Russian shipper to build two LNG barges that will serve as intermediate stops to supply natural gas produced in the Arctic Ocean to Europe and Asia.