China’s Sinopacific Shipbuilding Group has won a domestic order to build five OSVs for Shenzhen Huawei Offshore Shipping Transport, subsidiary of Shanghai Salvage Company.

Sinopacific said the contract marks the first domestic order for offshore vessels for the shipbuilder which has been building vessels for overseas owners.

The vessels will be designed based on Sinopacific’s inhouse SP brand, with three AHTS vessels based on the SPA85L design and two PSVs based on the SPP35ML design.

The vessels will be built in Zhejiang Shipbuilding and they are expected to be delivered from February 2016 until the end of the year.

The newbuildings will be deployed for deepwater oil exploration in South China Sea.

Since 2013, Huawei Offshore has initiated a round of fleet update to include energy saving and environmentally friendly OSVs to support the company’s long term business.

Simon Liang, chairman and ceo of Sinopacific, commented: “In the future, we will carry on our research and development of forward looking products and provide more value-added vessels to the industry.”