The ship trading market this year is just like a stage for all the players to show their graceful dance in turn – one appears on and the other steps down, one shines like stars while others are shadowed on. On the stage, the former stars may fall out of date with the market changes.
A few years ago, with the widening of the Panama Canal, Panamax bulk carriers were absolutely the focus of the market. However, current bulker prices have slid to the bottom in recent years and even continued to dive into the unknown abyss. Capesize vessel price may also be affected meanwhile.
A source said that a 72k dwt bulker (built 1996, gearless) was sold to Greek owner at $15.4m. Meanwhile Panamax charter rate has been hovering around $13,000/day, lower that handymax rental.
In secondhand market, Panamax bulkers are also lining up to sales. However, the prices are not so desirable with guiding prices at $20m (geared).
However, this is a superb chance for domestic bulker buyers to go bottom-fishing, especially those in need of 15-year-old Japan-built bulkers. For in regards of ship maintenance and performance, those vessels boast obvious advantages compared to the domestic new vessels, especially the global warranty for main engine and auxiliary equipments.
But it is not good news for the whole market. DVB predicts that the Panamax bulk carrier price will continue to decline till 2013 or 2014. Currently, Panamax ship new orders have come up to 709 but the old vessels demolition is relatively too weak to balance the capacity. Although 40% of the new orders are expected to face delays or even cancellation, it is clear that overcapacity is still inevitable, which directly result in the long-last declining downturn in freight and ship price.
Nevertheless, whether to go bottom-fishing is still a problem worth careful consideration for buyers, especially those small and mid-size enterprises. For it is not very clear if the market would still continue the downturn and shipowner will have to consider if they could survive in worse conditions.
In 2011 ship trading market, containership is the acknowledged leading role on the stage. After Evergreen shipping put forward its new fleet construction plan, many big liners like Maersk, MSC all enters into boxship newbuilding market, which pushed the straight 15-month growth of containership new orders. However, till now S. Korea sweeps the market by winning 85% of the new orders, especially mega boxship orders for 8,000 TEU’s onwards. The high-tech, high value-added containerships has been the short-board for Chinese shipbuilding all along and it became ever prominent when the biggest Chinese private shipping line SITC ordered boxships at Korean shipyard.
In the secondhand containership market, small secondhand containership prices have shown a significant decline. German owner Hansa Treuhand offloaded a 1.012 TEU’s (built 1992) at $ 6.2m and another 1,100 TEU’s at about $ 6.5m which was once offered $ 10 m in May.
According to Alphaliner statistics, totally 61 new containerships has been delivered this year, the same level with the peak volume in 2006. Mega vessels over 10,000TEU of 290,000 TEUs and 32 containerships over 7,500 TEU have entered the shipping market, which raises people’s concerns over future declining freight rate due to capacity blowout. Besides, the conditions small and medium shipping enterprises would also be more unclear with the high-profile expansion of some giant liners.
In tanker market, domestic oil transport market is basically stable with slight rise. Ten-year-old Chinese-built tankers of 3,000-5,000 tons have continued the high price and market demand is still unabated. While single-hull tanker phase-out is accelerated, newly-built double-hull ships will speed up the steps to occupy the market. In addition, the recent Middle East political instability may also affect the market to some extent. Official data shows that global tanker fleet capacity growth will reach 4.5% this year, which is less than previously expectations.
In offshore and special ships sector, the demand has been always strong. Chinese shipyards, mainly large shipyard, have constantly made breakthrough from the beginning of this year,. However, compared with its counterpart S. Korea, China still has a huge gap to overcome, especially in the output value and added value which confronts the whole Chinese manufacturing industry.
In July, S. Korean Shipbuilding Industry Association claimed to regain the leading role in global shipbuilding industry. Statistics clearly demonstrates that the gap between Chinese and Korean shipbuilding has been widened against two years ago: the first half of this year, S. Korea accounted for 53.2% of the global shipbuilding market share while China occupied 30.8%; what is more important, S. Korea reached $ 31.4 billion in the total order value while China got only $8.8 billion. As for the reasons, it is omnifarious: our losing advantages in labor and raw materials, the increasingly prominent drawbacks in management, innovation, high-tech sector, etc. In secondhand S&P field, our backward information network, incomplete system and other disadvantages also hinder the industry smooth development.