Amid prolonged troubled shipping market, there has been steady fresh orders for newbuildings in almost every ship type, particularly demand for newly-developed innovative ship design soaring in 2012.
In case of standard commercial ships, bulker contracts doubled tankers' and only one boxship has been ordered year-to-date.
Meanwhile, contracts for specialized ships, such as LNG carrier, etc., and offshore facility, related to gas development, continued to take a favorable turn. Also, due to increase in deep-sea oil/gas field development, offshore support vessels and rigs have been ordered steadily.
It turns out that a total of 26 and optional 10 newbuilding bulkers have been contracted by the mid-February this year, including 11+2 handysizes, four supramaxes, two panamaxes, 4+2 kamsarmaxes and 5+6 capesizes.
Recently, brand-new vessel with improved fuel efficiency is meeting with growing demand and would get more interests afterwards, facing global fleet over-supply.
Fleet renewal may be the key to survival for bulker owners down the road as it has become increasingly difficult to trade old vessels in a market where charterers can fix newly-built tonnage for a song, said Seanergy Maritime Holdings’ chief executive Dale Ploughman.
Meanwhile, a total of 13+4 tankers have been newly ordered year-to-date and as for ship type, 8+4 product carriers, one aframax tanker and four VLCCs.
However, boxship has just been inked for 1+1 4,800TEU ship, facing economic slowdown and lower rates.
As for gas carriers, overall 12+2 vessels were contracted, including 6+2 LNG carriers, one VLGC, four ethylene carriers and one small-sized LPG carrier.
In particular, offshore energy development booming in recent days, one central processing facility, one LNG-FSRU, one drillship and one semi-submersible rig were contracted year-to-date and offshore support vessel orders reached to the tune of 19 units so far.