Industry News

At 27% year-on-year, growth in the global shipbuilding orderbook is running at its fastest pace since the eve of the 2008 financial crisis, with contracting volumes now tracking levels last seen during shipping’s great pre-Lehman ordering frenzy.

The global merchant fleet stood at 117,022 ships of 1.8bn gt at the start of August, up 4% year-on-year, according to the latest data from Clarksons Research.

The orderbook, however, is expanding at nearly seven times that rate. Clarksons counts 9,012 ships totalling 405.9m gt currently on order, with the backlog swelling by an extraordinary 27% in gross tonnage terms over the past 12 months.

On the current trajectory, contracting is running broadly in line with the record 173.7m gt ordered in 2007, the defining year of the last shipping supercycle.

Greek owners have been the most aggressive buyers of new tonnage so far this year, closely followed by Chinese owners, with Singapore a distant third.

In 2006 and 2007, booming freight markets, easy access to capital and confidence in seemingly limitless Chinese commodity growth produced an unprecedented ordering wave. By the time the financial crisis arrived, the global orderbook had ballooned to more than half the size of the existing fleet.

Nothing since has matched that speed of expansion. Even the post-pandemic rush fell short, with the global orderbook growing by around 24% during 2021 as liner companies and LNG carrier owners poured record earnings back into ships. Clarksons subsequently calculated that the orderbook expanded 26% during 2024, itself an exceptional year.

The latest 27% reading therefore pushes the current cycle into territory shipping has not experienced since before Lehman Brothers collapsed.

The sheer scale of today’s backlog is also becoming remarkable in its own right.

The global merchant ship orderbook has averaged roughly 230m to 240m gt during the 2020s. At 405.9m gt today, the backlog is therefore around 70% to 75% larger than the decade-to-date average.

There are significant differences between the two supercycle eras.

Today’s fleet is considerably larger, banking discipline is greater and a meaningful share of ordering is linked to fleet renewal, ageing ships and uncertainty over future fuel and emissions requirements.

Nevertheless, the pace of contracting is increasingly difficult to dismiss as simple replacement demand.

The comparison with 2008 has been hanging over shipping all year.

At Posidonia in June, memories of the last great boom became one of the recurring topics of conversation as cash-rich owners celebrated another period of exceptionally strong freight and asset markets. Clarksons revealed in Athens that its ClarkSea Index was averaging around $40,000 a day, the strongest start to any year on record, while Steve Gordon, the company’s research chief, observed that shipping had “more cash than we’ve ever had”. The combined value of the world fleet and orderbook had reached a record $2.4trn as of the start of June.

The echoes were difficult to miss. Posidonia 2008 took place just three months before the global financial crisis. This year’s gathering again combined booming earnings, elevated vessel values, abundant cash and an increasingly frantic rush for shipyard berths. Safe Bulkers boss Polys Hajioannou voiced concern about the return of yard capacity, while Harry Vafias described ordering ships at current prices as “statistically wrong”, warning that “sooner or later the party will finish”.

Yet today’s market is also being propped up by forces that barely featured in 2008. Red Sea and Hormuz disruption, sanctions and increasingly fragmented trade flows are adding tonne-miles and removing effective capacity from multiple shipping sectors. That creates exceptional earnings, but also raises an uncomfortable question that needs to be aired at shipowner board rooms across the world: how much of today’s demand is structural, and how much disappears when the detours eventually end?

Source: splash247.com/