Leading global shipping broker Braemar Seascope’s most recent Quarterly Container Ship Fleet Statistics report predicts that 2013 is likely to be the biggest year ever for container ship deliveries.According to the report, as of Sept. 24, 550,000 TEU or 3.4 per cent of the fleet stood idle. That is up almost 31 per cent from around 420,000 idle TEU in May.
Braemar estimates that about 1.7 million TEU worth of capacity is scheduled to be delivered during 2013. That would be up from the roughly 1.3 million TEU that it expects to be delivered in 2012. That would represent growth in raw deliveries of about 30 per cent.
The biggest year previously for deliveries was 2008, when the capacity of 1.5 million TEU was delivered to the industry.
Many ships will be taken out of service, however, meaning the total capacity in the sector should rise about 9.5 per cent in 2013, Braemar predicts. That will almost certainly be greater than the growth in container volumes, as the IMF and others are predicting global trade growth will be lower than the overall global GDP growth of about 3 per cent in 2013.
The report further revealed that in the Pacific, the US West Coast-bound container volumes have grown by just 1.2 per cent in the first eight months of the year, and saw a year over year drop in volumes in July and August. If the slowdown continues for the rest of the year, estimated annualized growth will then end up at just 0.7 per cent. Of course, export shipments into financially challenged Euro Zone have dropped dramatically over the past couple of years.
In this almost post-Panamax era, very large capacity ships will make up much of that new TEU supply, Braemar’s research also finds.
Braemar says 48 ships will be delivered in 2013 that have capacity of 10,000 TEU or greater, and that in total it will inject 650,000 TEU into the market. It says that the annual deliveries of ships in excess of 10,000 TEU will average at about 50 units per year between 2011 and 2014.
Mr. Jonathan Roach, Braemar Seascope’s container analyst, said: “With fleet management at the forefront of ship manager’s minds, supply growth this year has been actively countered with plenty of demolition. During the first three quarters of 2012, containership demolition reached in excess of 220,000 TEU and we estimate by the end of the year the TEU capacity scrapped will reach the 300,000 TEU level.”
According to him, that represents the equivalent of approximately 2 per cent of the global fleet at the start of 2012, but that is obviously still well below new capacity coming into the market, which means continued good news for shippers, who remain well in control of the supply-demand balance.
A key factor in the trend is naturally enough a slowdown in new orders. BIMCO counts 46 new orders placed by the container shipping segment during 2012, putting it on track to be the lowest level in many years other than 2009.
BIMCO adds that year-to-date net growth is currently at 5.1 per cent with just over 1 million TEUs having been added.
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