The remarkable resurgence in containership ordering at yards in East Asia over the summer has pushed delivery dates for most other ship types towards the end of the decade. June, July and August have seen near record levels of containerships contracted, principally in China. June was the second highest ever, according to Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at Xeneta, with 1.04m teu contracted. Only March 2021 is higher at 1.13m teu. August is running this record close with 0.97m teu of orders according to data from Linerlytica. “When only six ships with a capacity of 4,746 teu were contracted in the fourth quarter of 2023, many might have thought that the containership contracting spree that began in 2021 had finally cooled. However, the appetite for new ships remains high and year-to-date contracting already exceeds the 2023 full year total,” commented Niels Rasmussen, chief shipping analyst at BIMCO. The containership order spree is only just starting Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC), the world’s largest containerline, has led the ordering binge with Alphaliner reporting the Geneva-based liner has spent more than $7bn in recent weeks and now has an orderbook that stands at 132 ships totalling 1.82m slots, larger than the entire extant fleet of Evergreen, the world’s seventh largest liner. “The containership order spree is only just starting. There’s plenty more to come,” Hua Joo Tan, co-founder of Linerlytica, told Splash Extra. “The Germans, Chinese, Koreans and Taiwanese have yet to make their moves. The Swiss and French aren’t done yet. The Danish will be forced to join, and don’t forget the Israelis.” “Additional containership orders in China… are increasingly taking up shipyards’ capacities,” broker Gibson noted over the weekend. “Combined with the further strengthening of containership market enquiries, the slots available for tanker newbuildings are competing with those for containers, affecting yards’ sentiments and ability to maintain their pricing and confidently promoting their forward deliveries.” TagsSplash Extra Archive Splash Extra August 2024