According to the statistics of CANSI, Chinese shipyards’ new orders came up to 29m DWT, falling by 42.8% in the first nine months of this year. The national order backlog totaled 168.86m DWT till the end of September, declining by 13.8% against the same period of last year.

For the decreasing orderbook, many shipyards face workload shortage or even became idle in the forth quarter.

As Yonhap revealed that Korean shipyard won new orders of 2.47m CGT in Q3, occupying 50% of global volume, which is much higher than Chinese shipyards’ 1.37m CGT. S. Korea is the most potential winner in the shipbuilding market of this year.

Being outstripped by S. Korea after three straight years’ leading the market, poor technology and failure to meet the market changes are the mainly reasons underlying Chinese shipyards’ lagging behind.  

S. Korea’s “secrets” to win the leading position back mainly lie in its reasonable product structure and its domination in high-value ship types as containerships, offshore plants and LNG carriers.