Chinese shipbuilders outperform Korean dockyards in August - BusinessKorea
Clarksons Research announced on Sept. 6 that 51 ships, 1.88 million CGT in total, were ordered worldwide last month. Of the total, 12 (760,000 CGT) went to South Korean shipbuilders, whereas their July track record exceeded one million CGT by a margin of 160,000. In August, Chinese shipbuilders won 35 (1.02 million CGT), according to BusinessKorea.
For the first eight months of this year, South Korean shipbuilders won 216 orders (11.92 million CGT) while Chinese shipbuilders won 475 (12.35 million CGT). The former topped the market in July and in January to July, but the latter overtook the former in August, when the latter’s cumulative total exceeded the former’s.
China’s dominance is likely to be short-lived in that LNG carrier orders are continuing to increase and South Korea is dominating this segment. According to Clarksons Research, eight LNG carriers were ordered last month and those went to South Korean shipbuilders without exception. From January to August, 111 LNG carriers were ordered worldwide and the companies won 83.
In that period, orders for LNG carriers each with a capacity of at least 140,000 cubic meters increased 190 percent year on year. In contrast, those for container carriers each with a capacity of at least 12,000 TEU fell 53 percent and those for very large crude carriers, S-max tankers and bulk carriers dropped 93 percent, 92 percent and 75 percent, respectively.
According to industry sources, South Korean shipbuilders’ performance decline in August is because they rejected less profitable orders. “The companies already signed a large number of contracts in 2021 and the first half of this year and they were pretty selective in August,” one of them said.
