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The container ship orderbook hit a post-financial crisis low just below 2m TEU in October 2020. In the eighteen months since then, liner operators have seen record profits and a large percentage of these have been poured into newbuilding contracts.
On 22 July, Russia and Ukraine signed an agreement with Turkey and the United Nations to allow grain exports from three ports in western Ukraine: Yuzhne, Chornomorsk, and Odesa. Combined, the three ports accounted for 65% of the country’s total grain exports over the past five years. Exports could, however, face several difficulties.
The outbreak from time to time of virulent diseases can have significant implications for ship owners and operators. This might include quarantine of a vessel and crew in an area where the disease is prevalent as well as the imposition of restrictions, possibly weeks or months later, in ports remote from the infected region as a precaution against the disease spreading further. The Novel Corona virus is the latest outbreak of a series of contagious disease that may impact shipping operations. In 2015 it was the Ebola virus and 10 years before that the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that caused similar concern. It is likely that equally serious strains of existing, or newly identified, diseases will occur from time to time. For this reason BIMCO has chosen to develop a set of comprehensive and clearly worded generic clauses for voyage and time charter parties that can be applied not only to the Novel Corona virus outbreak but to other similar virulent diseases that may occur in the future.
The shipping number of the week provides members with a brief analysis of relevant developments in the shipping markets.
What a difference a year makes! At the end of 2021, container ships were enjoying a historically strong market and freight and time charter rates had yet to peak. At the same time, dry bulk ships were seeing multi-year high rates slipping away, although still enjoying better returns than in previous years. However, tanker ships were seemingly still stuck in a COVID market rut without any immediate hopes for a strong comeback.
If EURO2020 was to be decided by shipping-related factors, who would come out on top?
In October 2020, the order book for new container ships bottomed out at 8.4% of the combined trading fleet. For ships smaller than 8,000 TEU, the order book bottomed out one month later at 3.7% of the trading fleet, and only accounted for 18.2% of the total container order book. Interest in the smaller segments, however, is bouncing back after months of hibernation.
