Friday Fun Fact #2: The largest ships can cost over $200 million to construct

Hello and welcome to our second post on shipping fun facts! Last week, we told you that shipping accounts for 90% of world trade. This time, we’re going behind the scenes of shipping mechanics!

The largest ships can cost over $200 million to build

To give you an idea of what you can do with $200 million, here are some comparisons:

• That’s over 800 times the average cost of raising a child till he’s 18 in the US. That’s excluding university tuition and boarding fees!




• Bill Gates can construct 375 of these ships with his personal fortune. Mark Zuckerburg can unfortunately only manage 223.




• That’s $55 million more than the 2015 GDP of Kiribati, an island nation in the central Pacific Ocean.




• You can buy the 26-acre Pumpkin Key island - a 50-minute boat ride from Miami. Valued at $110 million, you’ll have $90 million left.




• Not a fan of living on an island? How about the Playboy Mansion? Ditch the ship for the $200+ million mansion and live among the stars in Los Angeles!




• Art fan? You can buy Pablo Picasso’s Women of Algiers painting valued at $179 million! $21 million frame excluded.




• It’s still cheaper than building a Boeing-777, which costs at least $260 million.

Currently, the biggest container ships belong to Mediterranean Shipping Company. The four sister megaships MSC Oscar, MSC Zoe, MSC Maya and MSC Sveva are capable of holding up to 19,224TEU.

So if you were a ship owner, be sure to protect and care for your vessel like it was your own child - at least 800 times more!

That’s it for today’s Friday fun fact! We hope you enjoyed it!