Tonnage providers have continued to reduce their fleets, after selling 71 ships to liner operators, particularly MSC and CMA CGM, in the last six months.
Alphaliner’s latest report noted that since August 2020, tonnage providers have sold just under 700 boxships, amounting to 2.27 million TEUs, to liner operators which furiously acquired second-hand ships to manage rising charter costs at the time.
MSC purchased 306 ships and CMA CGM acquired 104 units, while opportunistic Russian liner operators purchased a dozen vessels from tonnage providers. MSC, now the world’s largest liner operator, has been aggressively acquiring ships and this month, its fleet is set to cross the 5 million TEU mark, a record for the industry.
Although still significant, the pace of the non-operating owners’ fleet’s decline has clearly slowed over the last seven months, compared to the hemorrhage of 2020 – 2022.
Between August 2020 and March 2022, tonnage providers sold 500 vessels of 1.6 million TEUs and another 120 ships of 430,000 TEUs between March and November 2022.
Altogether, tonnage providers have sold around 675 vessels, amounting to over 2 million TEUs, to liner operators in just under three years. Many of these ships are in the 700 – 9,000 TEU sizes.
Alphaliner stated that tonnage providers have only bought 32 vessels for 94,000 TEUs during this period, although real sales could be lower because some ships changed hands from one non-operating owner to another. When looking strictly at ships that tonnage providers bought from end users, the tally is reduced to only 14 vessels of 45,500 TEUs.
In addition, tonnage providers ordered a dozen newbuilding vessels totalling 54,000 TEUs, a very modest number. Among the significant orders were a pair of 5,900 TEU ships that Greece’s Danaos Corporation commissioned at Qingdao Beihai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry and two 1,930 TEU ships that Germany’s Reederei Nord ordered at CSSC Huangpu Wenchong Shipbuilding.
Alphaliner calculated that newbuilding orders placed by tonnage providers in the 700 – 9,000 TEU range since August 2020 amount to just over 1 million TEUs or around 280 ships, leaving a shortfall of 1 million TEUs to replace vessels sold to liner operators. This gap is particularly obvious in the 2,000 – 2,600 TEU range and classic Panamax sizes where the net loss is respectively 78 and 93 ships.
Alphaliner stated, “Classic Panamaxes are however, a dying breed and will increasingly be replaced by new generations of compact, fuel-efficient vessels of 6,000 – 7,500 TEU, which have been ordered en masse by both liner operators and non-operating owners. The 5,300 – 7,500 TEU size segment is actually the only one where the replacement fleet exceeds the sold fleet, due to a high level of orders for compact 7,000-7,500 TEU vessels placed over the last 30 months.”
Martina Li
Asia Correspondent
