SHIPPING AND MARITIME TRANSPORT 2012-2013 - ANAVE June 2012 | Page 15

ANAVE SHIPBUILDING
credit constraints applied by banks resulted in very few orders for new ships. Specifically, after the decrease of 52.9% in new contracts in 2011, last year's contracting dropped again by almost 30%, totalling only 44.8 million dwt or 16 million CGT (- 36%). This level of new orders, that, according to Platou is around 50% of the shipyards annual building capacity, reduced the average time of vessels delivery and therefore drove down newbuilding prices. Platou estimates that in 2012 owners invested 30,000 million in new ships compared to 50,000 million last year. As a result of the lower levels of orders and the high rate of deliveries, Despite this general downward trend of contracting, tanker orders increased to 14.2 million dwt (+54%), firstly because contracts of product tankers increased significantly and also because high levels of rates in the LNG tankers market (as an exception to the general trend), led to the ordering of 33 new vessels with a total of about 2 million dwt. By contrast, the very low freight rates drive orders down by 33.6% for bulk carriers, up to 19 million dwt, and especially for containerships, whose new contracts were reduced to less than one third, to only 0.5 million TEUs. Cancellations of tankers dropped from 10 million dwt in 2011 to only 4 million dwt in 2012, and from 0.2 to just 0.02 million TEU for Last year, 81.2% of new orders were for shipyards in China, South Korea and Japan. China obtained a 34.6%, slightly lower than in 2011 (-0.8%) and, according to Platou, one third of the CGT were contracted to Chinese owners. In Korea, the new contracts fell by 48.5% and total orderbook fell by 34.4% and as of 1 January 2013, totalled 211.0 million dwt. Bulk carriers comprised half of the orderbook, with 105.4 million dwt (15.6% of the existing fleet of such vessels), followed by tankers, with 49.4 million dwt, accounting for 23.4% of the portfolio and 10.7% of the existing fleet. The containership orderbook included 3.4 million TEU (20% of the existing fleet) and that of LNGs 92 ships, 27% of the existing fleet capacity. Conversely, deliveries remained at very high levels, totalling 149.4 million dwt, only 8.7% less than the record reached in 2011. Of these deliveries, 65.8% (98.2 million dwt) were bulk carriers and 21.0% (31.4 million dwt) tankers. Also 1.3 million TEU of containerships were delivered.

I

n 2012, the extremely low freight levels in almost all markets and the

containerships, while cancellations of bulkers remained at a similar and relatively high level, around 13 million dwt.

WORLD SHIPBUILDING 1970 - 2012
Million dwt

Source: Fearnleys, Platou

Shipbuilding

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