Big jump in newbuilding orders

According to Clarkson latest data, the world signed 1.83 million DWT of new ship orders in June, representing an amazing jump from the zero in May. It?s also the first time that the global new ship orders had passed 1 million DWT since last November.

Chinese shipbuilders gained nearly 1.6 million DWT of new orders in June amounting to 87.4% of the total while Korean shipbuilders got 0.23 million DWT of new orders taking up 12.6% of the total. According to the statistics, the monthly conclusions of new ship orders signed during last November up to May respectively posted at 0.8 million DWT, 0.21 million DWT, 0.61 million DWT, 0.24 million DWT, 0.69 million DWT, 0.13 million DWT and null.

According to the report, Jiangsu Rongsheng Heavy Industries Group signed a letter of intent of four 400,000 DWT VLOCs with Oman Shipping Co while Korea’s STX inked four 50,000 DWT oil tankers with European companies. It?s these two contracts which broke the deadlock in May.

Zhang Baojing, chief analyst of Csscinfo, said “The unit price shows a small decline from $133 million per vessel fixed last year when the shipbuilder contracted 12 VLOCs with Vale. He said that the present unit price of VLOC will be the reference price in future.”

However, industrial sources believe the jump in orders is unlikely to represent the bottoming-out of global ship industry and that the real recovery will not happen untill least until the beginning of next year.