Ship owners scrap 1,119 ships during 2013 on the back of oversupply issues:

Scrapping of older vessels is still the best bet that ship owners can make, in order to improve their newer vessels' fortunes, amid an oversupply of tonnage, which has plagued most shipping markets over the past couple of years. As such, it can only be deemed a good thing that owners scrapped a total of 1,119 ships over the course of 2013, making it an exceptional year for the ship breaking industry. According to figures compiled by shipbroker Lion Shipbrokers, "the majority of scrapped tonnage was bulkers, followed by general cargo vessels, containers, tankers and passenger-ships, while India held the lion’s share.

The New Year 2014 started positively as breaking yards in Subcontinent are hungry for new tonnage. Local currencies have finally settled down and steel prices have stabilized. Although upcoming elections in February are disturbing the Bangladesh scene, levels and demand remain healthy, with expectations for prices being optimistic, mainly due to the fact that yards remained empty during the last 2 months (due to political instability). Pakistan market remained stable while India is back, securing high profile tonnage (with the local currency being stable against the US dollar). Chinese market is active mainly due the subsidies available to the yards for scrapping Chinese domestic owned tonnage and their renewal of licenses before Chinese New Year holidays", Lion Shipbrokers noted.

Meanwhile, in a separate report, Golden Destiny noted that "2013 ended with scrapping business being at 26% lower levels, in terms of number of vessels, than the historical highs of 2012, but still standing at robust amount as 968 vessels reported to have been headed to the scrap yards with accumulated dwt of more than 44mil tons. During 2012, 1309 vessels reported for disposal at total deadweight of about 61mil tons", the shipbroker said.

It added that "with the opening of New Year, benchmark scrap prices in the Indian subcontinent region are standing at firm levels, with India being the most competitive by offering $410/ldt for dry and $440/ldt for wet. The Indian currency fundamentals and local steel prices are supporting the current high price momentum, while in Bangladesh; the upcoming elections have created confusion and lower activity. In China, prices have picked up by $10/ldt for dry and wet cargo and the recent government incentives for Chinese owners to scrap their vessels locally may boost further the price sentiment during the first quarter of the year".

In total, over the past week, demolition activity was 71% down on the week, with a 70% decrease of dry bulk vessel scrapping and a 60% decline in tanker and container ship scrapping. "In terms of deadweight sent for scrap, there has been 67% weekly decrease with 1 demolition deal reported for large vessel size, 1 panamax bulker. China is reportedly to have won 4 of the 7 demolition transactions, 2 India, 1 Pakistan, while there was no reported activity for Bangladesh. Benchmark scrap prices in the Indian subcontinent region: $400-410/ldt for dry and $430-$440/ldt for wet cargo. Scrap prices in China hover at $340/ldt for dry and $350/ldt for wet cargo. At a similar week in 2013, demolition activity was up by 5%, in terms of the reported number of transactions, when 19 vessels had been reported for scrap of total deadweight 975,406 tons with 9 disposals for bulkers, 1 tanker, 1 liner and 7 containers. Ship-breakers in Indian subcontinent region had been offering similar levels of the current year, $400-410/ldt for dry and $425-$435/ldt for wet cargo", Golden Destiny said.

Finally, according to Intermodal's latest weekly report, it was noted that after the demolition market "pulled back as the year kicked off, it seems that some of the lost ground has now been covered and sentiment has started to strengthen across the Indian Sub-Continent once again. Indian breakers were confident enough to increase their bids on dry units on the back of the Indian Rupee behaving steadily and steel prices settling to levels that provided confidence to local buyers, who manage to snap the majority of vessels reported heading for scrap this week. At the same time, Bangladesh seems to have steadily started coming out of the political unrest as the existing government managed to stay in place after the general elections that took place on the 5th of January, which restored some of the market confidence at least for now. The rest of the market remained quiet with Pakistani and Chinese breakers choosing to sit on the sidelines, while both prices and activity reflected that very lack of interest from end buyers in both countries. Average prices this week for wet tonnage were at around 350-445$/ldt and dry units received about 340-435$/ldt", the Piraeus-based shipbroker said.

Source: carbon positive. Thursday, 16 January 2014 02:00

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