With the robust recovery of global trading, containership owners have been ever active in landing new boxship orders at shipyards. About $15.7bn has been invested in containership newbuilding orders, double that invested in the whole of 2010 according to Alphaliner. Statistics shows that new containership orders totaled 1.43m teu for 177 ships in the first half of the year worldwide, the amount of boxship orders in the entire of 2010.
However, ship owners are beginning to slow down their pace in contracting new boxships since the second half of the year.
In the first half of the year, high deliveries and overcapacity have begun to affect on the shrinking tanker and bulker orderbooks and greatly brought down demand for newbuildings. New orders for both sectors declined sharply in this period.
Insiders are now concerning that containerships orders may face same decrease due to the falling freight rates and deficient supporting funds.
Although many high-profile buyers such as Maersk, Seaspan and Zodiac are said to be at an advanced stage of discussion with shipyards for new contracts, it is hard to see large orders recently given the current market conditions.
Ship owners and operator are backing off for the time being in view of the decreasing freight rate and many boxship newbuildings are being placed on ice. Even some sources put forward that the market has switched off.
Insiders say that many shipowners are now waiting for new market opportunities while boxship prices are expected to fall by 5-10% in next few months.