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As European Union retail trade stagnates, the question for the Far East to Europe container trade will be whether consumers will buy less or cheaper.
In the first two months of 2024, crude tanker newbuild contracting surged to 7.4 m DWT, a 490% leap y/y, due to a rise in orders for very large crude carriers – VLCCs. A notable 19 VLCCs were ordered, already surpassing the number of orders for this ship type during all of 2023.
Despite falling 1.1% m/m in both November and December, US retail sales volumes remain 13% above 2019 levels and 6% higher than the pre-COVID trend. However, sales volumes could return to trend during 2023 and thereby pose a risk for Asia to North America container volumes.
Over the next ten years, from 2023 to 2032, more than 15,000 ships with deadweight capacity of more than 600 million tonnes are expected to be recycled, more than twice the amount recycled in the previous ten years.
On 26 September, soymeal prices in China surged 8% to CNY 5,500 (USD 739) per tonne compared to Monday last week. Following a jump in demand ahead of China’s national day on 1 October some crushers have had to stop production due to a shortage of soybeans. This could signal a recovery in imports after months of lacklustre demand and high soybean prices which have caused a 6.2% y/y drop in soybean imports so far in 2022.
The container ship orderbook hit a post-financial crisis low just below 2m TEU in October 2020. In the eighteen months since then, liner operators have seen record profits and a large percentage of these have been poured into newbuilding contracts.
Since 2006, the average container ship has doubled in size to 4,580 TEU and ships with a capacity of more than 12,000 TEU has accounted for 51% of the fleet’s capacity expansion. Today, just 626 ships provide 36% of the fleet’s capacity, and the trend is set to continue as the large ships dominate the order book.
What a difference a year makes! At the end of 2021, container ships were enjoying a historically strong market and freight and time charter rates had yet to peak. At the same time, dry bulk ships were seeing multi-year high rates slipping away, although still enjoying better returns than in previous years. However, tanker ships were seemingly still stuck in a COVID market rut without any immediate hopes for a strong comeback.
In the first seven months of the year Chinese coal imports from Australia have totalled just 780,000 tonnes as Chinese restrictions on Australian coal have started to hurt, according to Oceanbolt.
The spread between very-low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO) and high-sulphur fuel oil (HSFO) has widened following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The HSFO price, however, could rise if Russian volumes coming into the market start declining due to sanctions.
