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After recently passing 15m teu, the global orderbook for containership newbuildings could near 16m teu by the end of the year, according to new analysis from Alphaliner.
“Before the end of the year, another 40 or so ‘megamax’ newbuilding contracts from Maersk, Yang Ming [both expected soon], CMA CGM, and MSC [both believed signed, but yet to be confirmed by Alphaliner] will push the global newbuilding pipeline very close to 16m teu in the last quarter of 2026,” it writes today.
On the Maersk order, Alphaliner reports that the carrier is exclusively talking to Chinese yards on cost and building slot availability.
It added: “Reportedly, the carrier is looking to place firm orders for 12 ships of 24,000 teu, potentially with options attached for a second series of 12.
“Tonnage of this category would currently be priced at around $240m per vessel.”
Meanwhile, according to analysts at Drewry, the global fleet currently totals 34m teu, which means that, even without the unconfirmed 40 newbuildings noted by Alphaliner, the orderbook represents 45% of the current fleet.
Almost a third of this – 4.9m teu – has been ordered this year alone, and should orders for the extra 40 vessels be confirmed, this would be likely well over 5.5m teu and make it a record year in terms of newbuildings ordered, beating last year’s 5.4m teu.
However, shippers hoping the influx of new capacity will lead to a sudden collapse in freight rates may be disappointed, according to Vespucci Maritime chief executive Lars Jensen, who spoke at a Hapag-Lloyd press briefing a few days ago.
“The market is not going to drop off a cliff. When we talk about the market crashing, that would be like what we saw in the financial crisis back in 2008. That, for sure, is not what we’re looking at,” he said.
“How I would more likely characterise the coming years is as a regular run-of-the-mill cyclical downturn. This is a cyclical industry, it has been ever since it was born, and this is another one of those cycles.
“So a crash? Absolutely not. But do we have too much capacity compared to what we can absorb? Yes, that is also the case,” he added.
Meanwhile, Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen added that the growing imbalance of the main container trades – particularly the yawning chasm between China’s export and import volumes – as well as an expected increase in vessels sent to be scrapped, would mitigate against new capacity.
“Of course, the orderbook is bigger than it has ever been, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind – one is that the current fleet is aging, so we will start to see scrapping going up.
“We can debate about when and at what pace, but that’s definitely going to come up,” he said.
“There’s the growth, especially the growth on some of those dominant legs – when you look at the middle of 2023 until now, the growth on the dominant legs has been about 25%, which is unbelievable.
“If you combine that with some of the inefficiencies we see popping up because of trade barriers and tariffs, one cannot rule out that we’re going to see another couple of years of pretty decent growth,” he said.
Mr Habben Jansen also pointed out that lead times for newbuildings had lengthened to near historic highs as slots as shipyards have become increasingly full.
“If you look at the orderbook today, where traditionally it used to cover two, or two and a half years of deliveries, nowadays it’s more like four, or four and a half years.
“If you order a ship today, you will only get it by 2030,” he added.