Page 114: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 1999)

New Orders Increase Dramatically - But Orderbook Fails To Rise New ship orders reported have increased dramatically, according to fig-ures published by Lloyd's Register (LR) in its quarterly World Shipbuilding Sta-tistics. In the quarter to June 1999, new ship orders rose by 43 percent over the previous quarter, to 6.5 million-gt. However, the total world orderbook remains at 53.8 million-gt, as comple-tions slowed during the quarter, down shiptype June 1998 June 1999 No. of ships GT No. of ships GT Chemical 187 2,390,793 153 2,107,718 Crude Oil Tanker 182 16,908,504 156 16,554,056 Oil Products Tanker 166 4,420,753 136 3,876,561 Bulk Dry 291 10,292,330 244 9,095,567 General Cargo 420 2,657,792 439 2,548,569 Totals 1,246 36,670,172 1,128 34,182,471 some 30 percent (2.4 million-gt) to 5.5 million-gt, although the 8 million-gt reported for the March 1999 quarter was Visit our new and updated web site www.seatrade-events.com for complete details about the next Seatrade Cruise Shipping Convention Not on-line yet? Then contact us. We'll be happy to send you information by fax or mail. Seatrade Cruise Shipping Convention Miller Freeman (Princeton) Inc. ? 125 Village Boulevard, Suite 220 ? Princeton, NJ 08540-5703, USA Tel: +1 609 452 2800 Fax: +1 609 452 9374 ? e-mail: [email protected] Circle 328 on Reader Service Card Circle 390 on Reader Service Card exceptionally high. Completions are now at a similar level to the reported average figure for the years 1995 to 1998 at between 5.1 to 6 million-gt. Japan and South Korea stil' show their domination of the market with total orderbooks of 18.9 and 17.4 million-gt respectively, although both have shown a small decrease in the total number of vessels over the same quarter last year. Perhaps more significantly, Japan has also seen a decline in terms of tonnage, with a total orderbook down 6.1 percent from 18.6 million-gt to 17.4 million-gt over the same quarter last year. South Korea's orderbook shows an increase of 2.7 percent (0.5million-gt) over the same period. During the period, China's orderbook increased by 14.3 per cent to 2.8 mil-lion-gt. Germany's ship orders fell by 20.5 percent to 1.8 million-gt, pushing Germany down the league table from fourth place to be overtaken by Italy. However, in terms of tonnage, the Ital-ian orderbook has shown no noticeable increase over the same period. Overall, the world orderbook has dropped 1.7 million-gt during the twelve-month period to June 1999. The table above ? detailing five of the main cargo carrying shiptypes ? shows a decrease totaling 2.5 million-gt, a fall of 6.8 percent. In the same period the passenger/RoRo cargo and passenger cruise orderbook increased significant-ly: 26 vessels (24 percent) up on the pre-vious figures, with a jump in total gross tonnage of 36 percent ? a gain of just Shiptype June '98 June '99 #s ships GT # ships GT Passenger/ RoRo cargo Passenger (Cruise) TOTALS 69 600,326 41 2,573,137 110 3,173,463 83 1,114,581 53 3,193,801 136 4,308,382 over 1.1 million-gt (see table directly above). Compared with the same quarter last year, the delivery schedule of the world orderbook for June 1999 shows that 36 percent of the of the orderbook is expected to be completed this year, with 47 percent Scheduled for completion in 2000, and just 17 percent in 2001 or later. The June 1998 figures showed a rather dif-ferent picture with 29 percent expected to be complete in 1998, 48 percent in 1999 and 24 percent in 2000 or later. 110 Maritime Reporter/Engineering News