Deferrals hit containership orders

The number of deferred deliveries and slippage for containerships has exceeded 1.8 Mteu, or a third of the current orderbook. The bulk of the deferrals recorded by Alphaliner are for ships above 4,000 teu, with 168 ships involved with an aggregate capacity of 1.6 Mteu. The average period of delay is 8 months and in some extreme cases, the delivery has been extended by up to two years.

Further delivery delays are expected, as many of the deferrals are negotiated privately between owners and the shipyards and some negotiations are still ongoing while the outcomes are usually not publicly disclosed.

Comparatively, the number of order cancellations has been relatively small, with only 170,000 teu of cancelled orders, of which 150,000 teu were recorded since the start of the current shipping crisis in October 2008. These order cancellations, deferrals and slippage have already pushed at least 340,000 teu originally due in 2009 into subsequent years. Net deferrals in 2010 and 2011 are lower as the cascaded delivery dates of earlier deferrals offset those deliveries that are pushed back to later dates.

Several contracts for series of ships smaller than 4,000 teu have also been deferred, or have slipped to later dates, but the picture is less clear for small and medium-size ship contracts. Many of these ships are built at greenfield shipyards, where slippage is a common occurrence. In these cases, it is difficult to determine whether the slippage in delivery is “negotiated” or whether it is a consequence of construction delays by the yards.

Recent moves by Danaos and Yang Ming to delay the delivery of their orders represent only the tip of the iceberg as more owners report on the conclusion of negotiations with yards.