A fall in rates causes concern

Business owners are constantly hoping for a rise in freight rates along with a fall in bunker prices, which have eroded earnings – overcapacity remains the bane of the market.

If this doesn’t happen, owners may have trouble maintaining service levels and avoiding serious cash-flow problems and insolvencies. Drewry warns that several companies are still struggling with bankruptcy and are reducing fleets to cut costs.

Rohit Pattnaik from Drewry Maritime Research, said: “While the decline in new building activity is commendable, there is a noticeable lack of investment in the specialised chemical tanker category, which could hurt the sector in the long run.”

Since the end of 2011, the average capacity of the fleet grew by 0.7% to 20,660 dwt as larger vessels are delivered and smaller ones were cancelled. The ships in chemical and vegetable oil trades were 1.1% larger at 14,570 dwt, whereas CPP ships decreased in average size by 2.3% down to 30,902 dwt as smaller ships were released from arrest or layup.

It looks set to be a quiet year in the shipyards though with the order book now standing at 5.7% of the number of ships and 6.9% of the dwt tonnage – the smallest since 2003.