A RECORD 200,000 TEU in new containership capacity will arrive in July, after a total of 747,000 TEU was delivered to the world fleet in the first half of the year.
Total new ship deliveries for the first seven months of the year will hit 950,000 TEU, or 7.3 per cent of the global fleet, reports Alphaliner, which estimates that 1.45 million TEU will be delivered during the whole of 2010.
"This represents 11.1 per cent of the world fleet at January 2010, with slippage and cancellations limited to only a small part of the containership order book. The July record will be achieved due to the deliveries of at least eight units of over 10,000 TEU. Only seven units of this size were delivered in the first six months of the year," said Alphaliner.
"Deliveries of these large containerships are expected to continue, with 12 more units of over 10,000 TEU planned for August and September. These units are to be handed over to only four major operators, CMA CGM, Maersk, MSC and Zim, (with Evergreen taking one of the Zim ships on charter).
"These VLCS/ULCS deliveries bring the average size of the new ships delivered in July to more than 6,000 TEU. The previous monthly record was registered in April 2008 when 156,000 TEU of capacity were delivered. At that time however, the average size of the new vessels was only 3,700 TEU.
"Together with the lower scrapping levels expected this year, the full-year overall capacity increase is expected to reach 9.6 per cent," it said.
Total demolitions year-to-date come to 120,000 TEU. With containership demolitions dwindling, Alphaliner said, it predicts the full-year scrapping level to clock in at under 200,000 TEU for 2010, compared to 377,000 TEU scrapped in 2009.
"The re-activation of the idle fleet has already brought back 1.24 million TEU of capacity since the beginning of January. In combination with the net increase brought about by vessel deliveries, this brings the total additions to the active fleet this year to over two million TEU. The figure corresponds to a net fleet increase of over 16 per cent for this year," said Alphaliner.
(Source:www.schednet.com)
