MYKOLAYIV (Reuters) – The director of Ukraine's third largest shipbuilders, state owned Okean, said on Monday it had clinched a $220 million deal to build ten bulk carriers for an unnamed German company.
'We signed a contract with a German financial group to build ten cargo ships for delivery in the next five years,' Mykola Romanchuk, Okean's general director, told Reuters in the southern port of Mykolayiv.
'The cost of each ship is $22 million,' he said. Romanchuk said his plant, one of Ukraine's nine shipyards, would build the ships of so-called Panamax class – able to pass the Panama canal fully loaded. He said the price quoted the German firm was 10 percent less than offered by Ukraine's Black Sea Shipment Company.
'About 80 percent of the payment will come before and during the construction and 20 just after we finish all the work,' said Romanchuk, whose shipyard is located some 500 km (310 miles) south of Kyiv.
Ukraine's shipbuilding industry, the biggest in the former Soviet Union, has got a boost last December, when parliament had passed the law backing the sector. Several contracts, including a $160 million deal with Norway, have been signed in the past two months.
