Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has received to date orders for a total of 33 large container ships from the Evergreen Group of Taiwan, beginning with the EVER REWARD completed in March 1994, with the final one on the list scheduled for completion in May 2001.
The container ships MHI has built and will build for the Evergreen Group are classified by the initial of the ship's name into the R series, U series and D series.
The R series, the first of the sequences of large container ships, comprises 4,200-TEU Panamax size ships built under the Evergreen Group's plan to increase the individual vessel size for the fleet serving its two-way round-the-world liner service commenced in 1984. Ten such ships, including five built by MHI, are deployed on the east-bound leg of the round-the-world trade.
The U series consists of 5,400-TEU over-Panamax size container ships intended to increase the fleet capacities for the North America and Europe trades, with five of them completed between June 1996 and April 1997.
