Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering won a 600 million pound ($940.5 million) order to build four tankers to support British navy operations.

The U.K. ministry of defense announced Wednesday that DSME was its preferred bidder for the new Military Afloat Reach and Sustainability project to build four 37,000-ton tankers by 2016 to provide fuel to warships and task groups.

It is the second largest defense export order Korea has ever won.

The export of navy tankers to Britain is expected to help Korean shipbuilders expand naval ship exports to Asia, Africa and the British Commonwealth countries.

DSME last year won new orders worth 12.26 trillion won including 10 super-sized container ships.

“We had expected about 12 trillion won in new orders for DSME this year, which didn’t include the navy tankers. The British Royal Navy order was a total surprise,” said Choi Kwang-shik, a researcher at LIG Investment and Securities.

Regarding a report that DSME won an order to build a floating production, storage and offloading unit for liquefied natural gas from Malaysia’s state-run petroleum company, DSME said Thursday that its front-end engineering and design contract for the LNG-FPSO was to be completed next month.

DSME made a bid for the final contract to build the LNG-FPSO in January, but nothing has been confirmed yet, the company said in a regulatory filing.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)