2021 is a peculiar year for container shipping
This year is turning out to be a spectacular year in container shipping; freight rates are record high, more cargo than ever before is shipped on the transpacific trade lane specifically and globally in general, and the previous annual record on new orders for container ship capacity has just been breached – in less than eight months.
619 container ships are now on order for future delivery, 381 in 2021 alone, and never has 3.44m TEU being ordered in such a short time span. Still, it’s not a record for the total orderbook, as 6.8m TEU were on order by the end of July 2008, compared to 5.3m TEU today.
60 container ships with a cargo carrying capacity of 16,000 TEU each were ordered in February, March, April, and June by just five different owners. The one half of them was ordered by two Top-4 tonnage providers and one minor, and the other half by operating liner companies.
As owners see a somewhat different trade pattern developing in recent years and very much right now, due to the US-China trade war and the COVID-19 outbreak, the more ‘versatile’ 13,000-16,000 TEU have been preferred to the Ultra-Large Container Ships (ULCS).
Container shipping capacity of 1.5m TEU has been ordered so far in 2021, for delivery in each of the years 2023 and 2024. As the scheduled orderbook for 2024 today stands at 2.15m TEU, it’s worth noticing, that the record delivery year, date back to 2015, where 1.66m TEU entered active service on the global container lines’ networks.
Source: hellenshippingnews
Related News
18/10
2023
Federal and state funding is on the way for hydrogen projects at the Port of Oakland. This is because the Biden administration announced on 13 October that California will receive up to US$1.2 billion as a designated hydrogen centre.
09/03
2022
Schedule reliability dropped again, this time by 0.9 percentage points, month-to-month to 30.9%. This is the lowest ever global schedule reliability since the Danish research and analysis company Sea-Intelligence started the measure in 2011.
29/06
2023
Dutch container terminal Rotterdam World Gateway (RWG) has agreed to a gradual extension of its terminal at the Prinses Amaliahaven on the Maasvlakte in the port of Rotterdam with its shareholders DP World, CMACGM/Terminal Link, HMM and MOL, and the Port of Rotterdam Authority.