As of the start of the year, the global outstanding orderbook for dry bulk vessels stood at 2,375 ships, with a potential carrying capacity of approximately 200 million dwt tons.
According to the latest weekly report from shipbroker Intermodal, out of the alarmingly large total of these orders, 1,677 ships of 139 million dwt were scheduled to be delivered during 2012, accouting for around 70%.
According to Intermodal’s John Cotzias, “the active bulker fleet stands at 8,477 ships and 645mil tons of carrying capacity. During 2012 the active bulker fleet has grown by 6% in ships and 8% in total dwt. VLOC’s in 2012 have grown by 17%, Capesize 4%, Post Panamax 14%, Panamax 6%, Supramax 12%, Handymax reduced by 5% while Handysize increased by only 2%."
At the same time, there were 1,677 ships deliveries originally scheduled for 2012, so we could assume with slippage rate, there would be 1,390 ships delivered in 2012. However we may expect that the total dry bulker deliveries for 2012 will reach a record high number of around 1,250 ships and abt. 108mil tons of extra dwt carrying capacity. Slippage therefore is estimated to reach around 23-25% for the current year.
According to Intermodal, “looking into deliveries of specific bulker size segments in 2012, we have recorded 49 VLOC’s, 91 Capes, 73 Post Panamax, 168 Panamax, 226 Supramax, 13 Handymax and 189 Handysize being delivered."
Scrapping has aided the bulker sector tremendously, as more than 21mil tons of dwt, abt 340 ships have been removed from the active fleet, this gives us around 1.6 dry bulker ships scrapped per day.