Newbuilding orders rise

Newbuilding orders rise

In the quarter to June, newbuilding orders rose by 43 per cent to 6.5 million gross tonnes (mgt), says Lloyds Register.

However, the world orderbook dropped by 1.7 mgt to stand at 53.8 mgt and Germany slipped into fourth place behind Italy

At the end of the quarter Korea remained slightly ahead Japan with order backlogs of 18.9 and 17.4 mgt respectively. Over the past year Korea`s orderbook climbed 2.7 per cent while Japan`s dropped by 6.1 per cent.

China saw its orderbook increase by 14.3 per cent over the last quarter to stand at 2.8 mgt while German yards saw orders fall by over 20 per cent to leave the backlog at 1.8 mgt – less than in Italy. Of the ships on order at the end of June, 36 per cent will be completed this year, 47 per cent next year with the remainder in 2001 and beyond.