China's shipbuilders sailing on brighter journey

World's largest LNG carrier to navigate shallow waterways delivered

Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co Ltd, the nation's leading builder of liquefied natural gas carriers, delivered an 80,000-cubic-meter LNG carrier to Shenzhen Gas Co on Feb 18. The vessel, known as Dapeng Princess, is the world's largest LNG carrier to navigate shallow waterways.

The carrier, at 239 meters long and 36.6 meters wide, has a load draft of less than 8.5 meters, the shallowest of its kind in the world, enabling it to navigate both rivers and shallow seas. It can travel down the Yangtze River and Pearl River basins even during the dry season.

Hudong-Zhonghua also delivered the Kunlun, one of the fourth-generation Changxing series LNG carriers on March 24. The carrier, capable of carrying up to 174,000 cubic meters of liquefied gas, is nearly 300 meters long, 45 meters wide and about 26 meters high.