Container ship orders on the rise

Although the past couple of weeks have seen a surge of new building ordering activity, it’s more than evident that so far in 2011, newbuilding orders are far behind the levels of 2010. According to a report from Clarksons carried by Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide, since the beginning of 2011 there has been a significant drop in ordering levels for sectors such as the dry bulk and wet markets compared to last year. However, there has been significant evidence of activity in other sectors such as containers, offshore and gas with the revival in container activity particularly significant. In this sector we have seen a substantial increase in the number of orders, with over 81 new contracts placed thus far this year, in comparison to only 6 vessels ordered in the similar period of 2010. This obviously represents a sizeable turnaround in the container newbuilding market and has helped alleviate potential concerns the major shipyards may have had, due to a lack of ordering in the other sectors.