More and more statistics concerning today’s record containership order book are in.
In all, Alphaliner reports there are just under 900 ships totalling more than 6.8 million TEU currently under construction worldwide.
Alphaliner reports that the number of new buildings is larger than the fleets of the world’s fourth, fifth and sixth largest shipping companies, respectively, Cosco, Hapag-Lloyd and Evergreen.
In 2007, when the order book-to-fleet ratio reached 64.2%, the global reference fleet was less than half this size.
Alphaliner reports that container vessels have seen their prices rise 30% to 35% in comparison with the end of 2020 due to tighter yard slots, higher steel costs, and rising energy costs.
According to Sea-Intelligence, MSC has the largest order book with more than 1.7m TEUs scheduled to be delivered in the next few years, surpassing Maersk earlier this year.
With MSC’s order book alone, MSC would be on an equal footing with Hapag-Lloyd as the fifth-largest carrier in the world. Danish Ship Finance reports that boxship contracting increased 256% in the first quarter of 2022 over the previous three months.
Data from Danish Ship Finance suggests that 319 and 263 new vessels will be delivered in 2023 and 2024 respectively, leading to 8% and 6% growth in TEU across the fleet before scrapping.
“If contracting activity continues to be high, we fear that oversupply will debilitate the container market for a long time,” Danish Ship Finance stated in a report released earlier this month.