44% of record global liner orderbook is replacement tonnage

The top 10 ocean carriers currently have 431 container ships on order for a total capacity of more than 5.9m teu, according to Alphaliner, something that along with record LNG carrier orders has elbowed out tanker and dry bulk owners from blue chip yards across Asia.

“Additional containership orders in China… are increasingly taking up shipyards’ capacities,” broker Gibson noted in a recent report. “Combined with the further strengthening of containership market enquiries, the slots available for tanker newbuildings are competing with those for containers, affecting yards’ sentiments and ability to maintain their pricing and confidently promoting their forward deliveries.”

Boxship newbuild contracting already exceeded the 2023 full-year total as of the end of August with hundreds of thousands of more slots booked in the intervening weeks.  The global liner vessel fleet reached 30m teu for the first time in history this June. 

While the global container fleet will grow significantly in the years ahead, Alphaliner data (see chart below) does show that nearly half of the ships on order among the big 10 liners will actually be replacement tonnage. Today, the top 10 container lines still operate 683 vessels aged 20 years or older, representing a capacity of more than 2.6m teu, Alphaliner data shows.

Assuming 25 years as the normal commercial lifespan of a sea-going cargo vessel, these numbers suggest that the top 10 operators could, between them, use 44% of their combined orderbook just to replace the oldest ships in service, rather than for growth.

Only one carrier has not ordered a sufficient number new ships to replace ageing tonnage, according to Alphaliner, with the accompanying chart (see below) clearly showing Maersk’s comparative inactivity when it comes to ordering.

Alphaliner did note, however, that Maersk has committed to a fleet renewal program of 800,000 teu over the coming five years, including 500,000 teu of chartered vessels. Several of these charters have yet to be unveiled, so that the “naked” numbers, as Alphaliner describes them, are somewhat distorted to Maersk’s disadvantage.