As of March 1, 2015 global backlog of orders exceeds 5,000 ships with aggregate deadweight of 308 mln t and total cost of $305 bln, IAA PortNews journalist cites Sergei Buyanov, Director General of CNIIMF, as saying at the Conference “Russian Shipbuilding”. According to him, almost half of orders in terms of deadweight are concentrated in China.
Geographical footprint of global shipbuilding is concentrated in one region, the ‘big three’ countries of the Eastern Asia (China, Korea and Japan) which annually account for 92-94% of global cargo ships supplies. A group of Asian states which strive to develop their domestic shipbuilding (Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, India) are far behind of them.
“European shipyards account for less than 1% of shipbuilding orders worldwide. Almost all European countries once known for well developed national shipbuilding – Germany, UK, Netherlands, Italy, France etc. – have lost their competitiveness in terms of mass production of conventional cargo carriers,” Sergei Buyanov says.
Meanwhile, when it comes to the cost of contracts the situation is different. S. Korea is the global leader with European shipbuilders looking much better here as they specialize in construction of hi-tech and high-cost vessels like multi-purpose supply vessels for oil & gas projects.
As for the share of Russian shipbuilding, it is noticeable only in the sector of tanker shipbuilding with a relative share of 0.1% in global deadweight – these are mostly product carriers of sea and river class. At the same time, Russia is quite a large investor in global shipbuilding market. In 2014, it accounted for 13% of total investments made by European countries and 4.5% of global investments into new ships. Last year, Russia was the 16th in terms of deadweight of the fleet under its control which is 1.5% of global tonnage.
Export contracts account for the majority of orders worldwide. Orders placed by national shipping companies make 30% of shipbuilding in China, 26% in Japan and 11% in S. Korea. As for the developing BRICS countries, they are focused mainly on their national demand: 77% in Brasilia and 50% in India.
The demand for newbuildings is currently formed by three groups of countries – first of all the largest economies and highly developed countries with a large share of maritime trade (USA, Japan, Germany), then conventional maritime carriers (Greece, Norway) and so called new industrial states (China, Singapore, South-East Asia countries).
In terms of investments into fleet construction, the leading countries are the USA, Greece, Norway, China and Japan.
All news