Yangzijiang Maritime Moves Into Stainless Steel Chemical Tankers

Singapore-listed Yangzijiang Maritime Development has been linked to another tanker newbuilding, this time alongside Taihua Ship Management for four firm plus two optional 28,000 dwt duplex stainless steel chemical tankers.

The series has been placed at Zhoushan Ningxing Shipbuilding, with Chinese shipping sources identifying Yangzijiang Maritime and Taihua as the companies behind the four-plus-two deal. Ningxing specialises in stainless steel chemical tanker construction, a niche that demands different fabrication capability from carbon steel tanker work and where relatively few yards worldwide compete.

No contract price has surfaced. Current market indications of around $46m per ship would put the firm quartet at roughly $184m and the full six-vessel package at about $276m.

The move takes Yangzijiang Maritime into a segment distinct from the rest of its programme. Its growing product tanker order at Jiangsu Haifeng comprises four 50,000 dwt medium range vessels and two 115,000 dwt LR2s in a deal worth more than $320m. Stainless steel chemical tonnage serves a separate trade, carrying aggressive and high-purity cargoes that cannot be moved in coated tanks, and it typically finds employment on longer contracts of affreightment with chemical producers rather than in the clean petroleum spot market.

For an owner building out a diversified tanker platform, that difference is the point. Duplex stainless capacity is expensive to build and slow to replicate, which has historically kept the segment's supply discipline tighter than the product tanker market and its earnings less exposed to swings in refinery margins.

The order continues the broader flow of specialised tanker work toward Chinese builders, at a time when newbuilding prices across the tanker complex have held close to their 2024 peak and yards with available slots in the mid-size segments have been able to write series contracts on terms unavailable during the previous cycle.