Newbuilding contracts appear to show an uptrend amid a spreading expectation that ‘newbuilding prices have already bottomed out in the global newbuilding market, expected to gradually bounce back soon’.
According to Clarkson, Korean shipbuilding industry has won newbuilding orders for 125 vessels of a combined 4.21m cgt, worth $11.5bn contract value while China was placed orders for 184 vessels of 3.41m cgt, priced at $5.4bn. This represents both countries saw sharply increased orders in cgt terms, 43% and 80%, respectively.    
As for contract value, however, Korea showed a year-on-year decline from $12.4bn and China also saw a slight growth from $4.5bn.  
As newbuilding price kept deceasing throughout the last year and hit the bottom toward the second half, they were seen to have dropped at the beginning of this year comparing with the same time period last year. However, owners as well as shipbuilders realized that the newbuilding price now has bottomed out that newbuilding contracts are making a recovery against last year.  
In fact, newbuilding price in Clarkson’s data remained around 126p and then posted 125.9p again as of the end of April since late November when it hit 125.9p.  
China Newbuilding Price Index recorded the lowest mark as 856p at the end of last December and then showed an uptrend steadily, reaching 863p around late April.  
Korean shipbuilding industry won 44 newbuildings of 1.41m cgt, worth $4.2bn, in April alone, greatly outpacing China which won a total of 36 vessels of a combined 6.3m cgt amounting $900m.
With the order recovery, Korea is standing on an orderbook with 762 vessels of 28.16m cgt, a slight increase from the previous month whereas Chinese orderbook kept a downtrend with 1,790 vessels of 32.10m cgt.
Particularly, new orders from commercial vessel sector, such as bulker, containership and etc. have seen a steady growth year-to-date that a price standard for a capesize newbuilding currently comes at around $47m while 4,800 teu containership costs $45m, each showing $0.5m rise from the previous month.