Global Container Ship Order Book Achieves New Record High of 8.3M TEUs

By 2024 end, the container ship order book touched 8.3 million TEU, a new record than the 7.8 million TEU of early 2023, said Niels Rasmussen, Chief Shipping Analyst at BIMCO.

The order book increased despite deliveries, as 4.4 million TEU were contracted during 2024, and hit a new record high of 2.9 million TEU.

Ships 8k TEU or bigger make 92% of the orderbook. The segment 12 to 17k TEU makes up 46% of the order book capacity.

Due to the contracting boom continuing over the last four years, Chinese shipyards have benefited a lot and presently hold 72% of the order book’s 8.3 million TEU while South Korean and Japanese Shipyards hold 22% and 5%.

Liner operators have 79% of order book capacity under their control and their share of fleet capacity is estimated to grow in the coming years.

99% of the order book will be delivered from 2025 to 2029 and 0.7 million TEU will be delivered in 2029 while around 1.9 million TEU will be delivered from 2025 to 2028, peaking at 2.2 million TEU in 2027.

Recycling of vessels has been limited to 166 vessels and 256k TEU in the last four years, the fleet’s average age has risen 1.4 years since 2020 began. Also, the number of vessels aged 20 and above has increased, making 3.4 million TEU equivalent to 11% of the fleet.

If all the vessels aged 20 years and more are recycled in the next 5 years, the fleet will grow to 35.8 million TEU by 2029 end, assuming no ships are contracted for delivery before 2030.

Segments smaller than 8k TEU would see an average annual contraction of four per cent while the segments larger than 8k TEU would grow on average 7% annually.

“It would require 680k TEU per year to recycle all ships 20 years old or older during the next five years but actual recycling is likely to end lower. As long as ships cannot fully return to the Red Sea, recycling will likely continue to be low and at the same time, the smaller ship segments tend to be recycled later than average. Therefore, average annual fleet growth during the next five years could end higher than 3%,” said Rasmussen.

Reference: World Cargo News