Worldwide containership fleet growth accelerates

Worldwide containership fleet growth accelerates    The container shipping industry faces a continuing expansion of the worldwide fleet of cellular containerships over the next two years, according to a forecast issued by the French shipbroker and information provider BRS-Alphaliner.
   Based on the orderbook as of Jan. 15 and assuming that no containerships are scrapped, BRS-Alphaliner predicts the total cellular fleet will expand 13.3 percent this year to 8.3 million TEUs and 14.5 percent during 2006 to 9.5 million TEUs. During 2007, fleet growth will slow down to 13.4 percent, bringing the cellular fleet to 10.7 million TEUs by the end of the year.
   These annual growth rates compare with fleet growth of 9.8 percent in 2004 and are higher than average historical growth rates.
   The cumulative expansion of the global cellular fleet over the three-year period Jan. 1, 2005-Jan. 1, 2008 will amount to an additional 909 containerships (27 percent more than now) and an extra 3.4 million TEUs in ship capacity (47 percent more), BRS-Alphaliner calculated.
   The latest figures will fuel growing concerns that supply now is increasing much faster than demand in container shipping, and may trigger a market downturn. In November, Ray Miles, chairman of CP Ships, told investment analysts the current bull run of the liner shipping industry could end in 2006 if demand weakens. He said at the time that industry forecasts show “a big gap” between expected supply and demand in 2006, with ship capacity predicted to go up about 14 percent in 2006 and traffic growth forecast to rise about 8 percent in that year. Miles cautioned that the prospect of a downturn in 2006 was still uncertain.
   The orderbook of new containerships is heavily biased towards larger vessels destined for the transpacific and Asia/Europe trades.
   Broken down by ship sizes, BRS-Alphaliner forecasts the worldwide capacity of ships of more than 4,000 TEUs — typically used in the east/west trades — will increase 21 percent this year and 23 percent during 2006. By contrast, ships of less than 4,000 TEUs will see their total capacity rise only 8 percent this year and 7 percent in 2006.
   During 2004, when global fleet growth was only about 9.8 percent, the capacity provided by east/west carriers still increased 17-18 percent in both the transpacific and Asia/Europe trades, according to the January World Liner Supply produced by ComPairData, a liner-shipping data provider and partner of American Shipper.