With global trade now on a solid recovery path, containership owners have been investing heavily in new vessels.
Latest weekly report from Clarksons says, “In a move away from recent patterns the containership orders placed this week have been backed by the large liner companies, such as the NYK/OOCL deal for the Vessels at Samsung.
It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks and months if the other alliances, such as the New World Alliance or the CKYH Alliance will also work together to secure berths to order a longer series of ships for the bigger sizes.”
Hellenic owners were also quite active in the market, despite market fears of otherwise.
In total 13 new contracts were reported involving Hellenic ship owners, out of which 6 were in the bulk carrier segment by companies like Niki Shipping, Kyla Shipping and Everlast, while Costamare announced the contracting of 5 container post panamax carriers.
Technomar Shipping is said to have been in negotiations with South Korean yards for a series of wide, post panamax ships of 6,600 TEU.
“Whilst the container sector continues to lead the market in terms of ordering volume this year, there also remains a strong level of interest in the more niche sectors such as LNG and Offshore.
There are also some signs of demand in the tanker sector slowly shifting, with the level of enquiry starting to increase compared to the first part of 2011, however the current size of both the dry and wet orderbooks continues to stunt any significant level of enquiry in these sectors.
Nevertheless in China, with empty berths still abundant amongst the smaller yards and demand levels still relatively low, pricing continues to be under pressure for the foreseeable future and this could lead to a small revival in Dry sector ordering as the year progresses, but this will have to wait to be seen.