According to Lloyd’s List, global boxship scrapping volume soars in the first eight months due to the increasing steel plate price and the accelerated replacement for the small ships.
By the end of August, totally 152,000 TEUs were sent for scrapping, almost twice of total of last year and reflecting the low margins for shipping market.
Smaller and feeder ships are still the majority of scrapped vessels and the average age has reduced to as young as 25 years old. The scrapping volume is predicted to come up to 200,000TEU by the end of this year.
At present, about 300 vessels (223,000TEU) in services are older than 25 years old, all of which are smaller than 5000TEU.