Containership orders just hit the headlines of all papers and websites recently to demonstrate the sector’s flourish.
OOCL declared their options at Samsung for four additional 13,000TEU Container ships at a price of circa $ 136m per vessel and Costamare also returned to Sungdong to order 5 x 8,800TEU Container ships priced at circa $ 95m per vessel and due to deliver in 2013. In China, Evergreen finally opts for CSBC with ten ten 8,000 TEU vessels after choosing Samsung for the first two tens. Meanwhile, Daewoo-Mangalia Heavy Industries in Romania inks four 9,000-teu boxships from the Israeli Ofer Global Holdings group under a contract of EUR 400 million with another four options, just to name a few.
“After going through a difficult period in late 2008 through early 2010 as a result of a sharp downturn in global demand, partly due to the global recession, as well as a large orderbook and an oversupply of tonnage, the container shipping sector has undergone a significant, and what we believe is sustainable, rebound,” Equity analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald put it like this.
It is a obvious fact that with the global trading and shipping now on a solid recovery path and the favors from containership owners and banks, containerships are now going through remarkable recovery. And new containership orders has continuously raced ahead of other sectors, with the value of orders placed for new containerships during the first four months of 2011 is more than double the comparable bulker orderbook. Besides, after the expectations of mega boxship era, Clarksons notes growing interest in small capacities.
Recent 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.”
Hellenic shipowners were also quite active in boxship market, despite market fears of overcapacity. Seven out of the total 13 new contracts reported involving Hellenic ship owners were in the boxship segment such as Costamare’s contract of 5 container post panamax carriers and Technomar Shipping’s negotiations with South Korean yards for a series of wide, post panamax ships of 6,600 TEU.
Statistics of shipping industry analysts Alpanliner shows totally 32 vessels of 226,500teu were delivered in April, a new high of single-month deliveries. And another 41 containerships of 204,000teu are expected to be delivered in May, which will further break the supply and demand balance in container shipping. 
In addition, the latest report of Alphaliner put forward deliveries of container ships are set to hit a record high in 2013, which will further deepen the fears of market overcapacity.
Lured by attractive ship construction prices and the strength of last year’s market recovery, owners have ordered the equivalent of 1.6 million TEUs of new capacity since June 2010. And shipyards will deliver vessels with capacity exceeding 2 million 20-foot-equivalent units in 2013 if owners and carriers exercise all existing options and planned orders, which would be significantly higher than the record 1.57 million TEUs shipyards delivered to vessel operators in 2008.
 “The unrestrained ordering observed in the last 12 months could lead to more over-supply problems for the industry,” Alphaliner said.
Clarksons Research has said in a separate analysis that capacity won’t grow as much as forecast because deliveries typically have been pushed back several months from the original schedule announcements.