Many liners or shipowners starting to scale up fleets, newbuilding orders for ultra-large boxships over 10,000teu exceeded 50 ships to date this year.
Ultra-large containerships went beyond 100 vessels, which remained just two ships in 2006. As of the beginning of this August, boxships of 10,000-teu and over in sail totals 105 ships of 1.32m teu, taking 9% of the whole 15.08m-teu vessels.
In case of including ships to be delivered by 2014, total amount would jump up to 260 vessels, 17%.
Hyundai Merchant Marine of South Korea joined in this scale-up trend, by recently placing newbuilding order of five 13,100 teu to Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. HMM had initially considered 12,600 teu, however, signed a firm contract for 13,100-teu, which is significant as Korea's largest containership.
Newbuilding order for ultra-large containerships reached a total of 52 ships of 765,500 teu y-t-d.
Researcher Kim Tae-Il, Korea Maritime Institute, said, "New order boom for ultra-large boxship is continued due to achievement of economy of scale, larger market and the latest trend for green ships. Market is reorganized with larger ships."
Meanwhile, newbuilding order for small-medium size boxships is forecast to increase during the last half of this year.