‘Shipbuilding industry to pick up after 2017’

DESPITE  a marginal deterioration in the growth outlook for the global shipbuilding industry, annualised five-year growth rates for the sector are still forecast to reach a healthy three to five per cent before picking up substantially after 2017.

According to Castrol Marine Trade Barometer, growth will be driven largely by the Asia-Pacific region coupled with  Latin America and the Middle East.

The Barometer explained that all European nations but the Netherlands face a downward trend until 2017.
Chief Operating Officer at Castrol, Mandhir Singh, was quoted as saying “The main growth in shipbuilding will come from Asia-Pacific countries to 2019. These nations are well positioned to supply ultra-large vessels, which shipping companies are increasingly demanding for their fuel efficiency and economies of scale.
“Traditional shipbuilding nations, like Germany and the United Kingdom, will need to up their game if they’re to compete with the colossal shipyards and deep ports of the Asia-Pacific region, ” said Singh
Based on the report, Hong Kong seems to be the biggest success story, overtaking South Korea and China to become the world’s second largest ship-parts trading nation. It is one of the few top 10 trading nations in the sector to see a rise in forecast growth since the last report.

Although China’s forecast annualised export growth to 2019 has dropped from 10.05 per cent to 8.08 per cent, the economic powerhouse has displaced South Korea as the world’s top exporter of ship parts. The dip in growth may be associated with China’s ongoing policy to move away from export-led growth towards domestic consumption.
Algeria has jumped straight into the ten fastest-growing ship-parts trading nations at number one, following heavy investment in port capacity, and in wider infrastructure and skills development. The country’s proximity to the European Union, soaring energy trade and developing relations with China have also helped.
The presence of Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela, a new entry at number seven, in the list of the fastest-growing ship-parts trading nations, according to worldmaritimenews  indicates the rise of Latin America as an important region for the sector in the years to come.

“Many Asia-Pacific nations have rapidly developing ports, improving infrastructure, low-cost communications and access to potential new customers via valuable shipping trade routes. This places them in a strong position for growth,” said  Singh.

Meanwhile, Containership reliability was broadly unchanged in November as the average on-time performance across all trades slipped by just 0.8 percentage points against October to 77.2 per cent.
According to Drewry Supply Chain Advisors, Six of the 10 trades covered recorded month-on-month on-time improvements in November, but worse performances in each of the three East-West trades and in the Asia-South America route – the only North-South trade to decline – dragged down the overall reliability performance. The average deviation from the sailing schedule was 0.8 days.

Eight of the 19 “Top 20” carriers measured scored an average on-time performance of 80 per cent or higher in November. After sharing the top spot in October, Evergreen once again led the pack with an overall on-time average of 85.3 per cent, followed by Wan Hai with 84.1%.
Other carriers to get scores of at least 80% in the month were K Line (81.8%), Maersk Line (80.9%), MOL (80.9%), OOCL (80.6%), Yang Ming (80.3%) and Cosco (80.0%). At the bottom of the rankings table was MSC, which scored 53.1per cent.