Some 90,000 teu of cellular capacity was consigned to lay-up in the past
two weeks, taking redundant tonnage to its highest level since March 2014,
according to liner shipping analysts Alphaliner.
Significantly, the list of 208 ships, or some 673,000 teu, includes four
containerships of 13,000 teu or over – two operated by MSC and one each by APL
and UASC.
The 13,892 teu APL Temasek has been at anchor since 10 August, a casualty
of blanked sailings and service curtailments by the G6 alliance in response to
weak demand from Europe for Asian imports.
And given the depressed state of the Asia-Europe trade the short-term
prospects of its reactivation, along with the 13,102 teu MSC Margrit, UASC’s
13,100 teu Tayma and the 13,000 teu MSC Flavia, appear bleak.
Container lines are now reassessing winter slack season programmes – the
G6 Alliance today said it would combine its two Asia-US east coast services for
the period, while its Asia-US west coast CC2 service will be suspended from
week 44. Maersk Line said recently it was looking at removing a further two-
four east-west strings in the final quarter of the year.
In many cases the 13,000 teu type has become a second choice vessel for
the four deepsea alliances on the Asia-Europe trade as members receive more
18,000 teu ships from shipyards. And with more ultra-large 18,000 teu-plus
ships stemmed for delivery this year, 2016 and 2017, it puts the 13,000-teus in
danger of becoming unemployable.
Alphaliner expects more container vessels to join the unemployed fleet
soon.
“Weak demand across almost all tradelanes globally has taken a heavy toll
on containership demand. On top of this, a constant stream of vessel deliveries
continues to add to the supply side pressure.”
It said that since the beginning of July around 480,000 teu of new vessel
capacity had been added to the world fleet.
Drewry Maritime Advisors this week reported that the number of
containerships sold for scrapping this year was running at less than half the
rate of 2014, with only 47 vessels demolished in the first six months of 2015
compared with 107 at the same stage the previous year.
Drewry expects scrapping to dwindle for the remainder of the year,
putting the number of demolished ships at its lowest since 2011. It said this
was partly due to a spurt of new intra-Asia services at the beginning of the
year and the temporary switch of some Asia-US west coast services to the US
east coast during strike-related disruption.
However, the main barrier to ship demolition has been the plunge in scrap
values caused by a downturn in global demand for steel.
The resulting oversupply of steel has been exacerbated
by scrapping subsidies granted by the Chinese government to its state-owned
shipping lines, forcing the price of its domestic steel down to around half the
price of a year ago and flooding the market with cheap steel.
Source: the load star.
30 September 2015
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