In Hellenic Shipping News 21/09/2016
Ship owners still believe that newbuilding orders aren’t the best option in today’s turbulent and quickly shifting market conditions. As such, they avoid tying up their precious liquidity for the years to come in a newbuilding order and instead opt for a quick move in the S&P market. In its latest weekly report, shipbroker Allied Shipbroking noted that newbuilding activity was subdued this week, with a minimal amount of fresh orders surfacing as buying interest started to diminish.
“Overall activity has been holding at minimal levels this year and the pressure has mounted considerably on shipbuilders to do their most in order to entice buyers on this path once more. Despite this it now looks that prices have hit a temporary minimum point, holding steady for several weeks now, especially for dry bulkers where we have seen hardly any new orders being placed this year, while current indications show that there is a considerable upward pressure on prices now building up under the surface. Despite the dire conditions faced by shipbuilders, it wouldn’t be to much surprise if we started to see quoted price levels on the rise once more, though even this will likely tend in accordance to any shifts in construction costs. The only thing that might make these price hikes more viable is the continual decreases in competition as more and more shipbuilders are forced to exit the market and shut down operations”, said Allied.
In a separate newbuilding report, Clarkson Platou Hellas noted that “there is only one order to report in the newbuilding market for this week. Shin Nihonkai Ferry have announced an order for one firm 14,400 GT Passenger / Car Ferry at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Being the 2nd vessel in series, this single unit is set to be delivered in within 1H 2017 from the Yard’s Shimonoseki facility and will be able to carry 600 passengers / 22 vehicles. Shin Nihonkai Ferry had already ordered one vessel in November last year for delivery in 1Q 2017”.
Meanwhile, in the S&P market, ship valuations specialist VesselsValue said that “within the Capesize sector, the ER Bayern and the ER Boston (179,400 DWT,2010, HHI) and the ER Bavaria (179,400 DWT,2010, Hyundai Samho Heavy Industries) were sold Enbloc for USD 20.75 mil each. The Hanjin Matsuyama (179,200 DWT,2011, Sungdong) was bought by Winning Shipping from Kumiai Senpaku for USD 22.75 mil. All of which pushed down modern Capesize values. Also sold was the C Blossom (179,300 DWT, 2009, HHI) was offloaded by Chang Myung Shipping to Five Stars Fujian for a firm USD 18.9 mil. Within the Panamax sector, KC Maritime sold the Darya Shree (74,800 DWT,2004, Hudong Zhonghua) for USD 5.1 mil. The Primrose (74,700 DWT,2001, Hudong Zhonghua) sold for USD 3.2 mil. 2 Supramax sales to report, the Fleet Phoenix (55,900 DWT, 2006, Mitsui Ichihara) sold for a firm USD 8.85 mil the Virginia (50,200 DWT,2001, Mitsui Ichihara) sold for a USD 4.2 mil. 4 sales within the Handy sector, the Pine 6 and Pine 2 (34,000 DWT, 2010, Nantong Yahua) and the Pine 4 (34,000 DWT,2009, Nantong Yahua) were sold by Woodstreet Inc enbloc for USD 6 mil. The Karine Bulker, an open hatch bulker (32,300 DWT,2008, Kanda) was sold by Orient Marine to Taylor Maritime HK for USD 7.7 mil. This pushed up mid 2000 handy values.
Container values have softened over the last week following the bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping also the demolition sale of the Viktoria Wulff (4,600 TEU, 2006, Stocznia Gdansk) for $303 per ldt valuing the vessel at USD 6.4 mil, the first 10yr old container to be scrapped”, VV concluded.
Similarly, Allied noted that “on the dry bulk side, a touch softer with regards to activity being noted with the largest chunk of transactions surfacing this week being for Capesize vessels. This in part has been the cause for prices to still hold steady, despite the fact that freight rates have shown signs of improving. It will be interesting to see the effect on prices once and if the freight market manages to show a good rally during the Autumn months. On the tanker side, we are still seeing limited activity and firmly focused on the smaller sizes. Again this week the reported transactions focused on product/chemical tankers of smaller size while we did also manage to see a couple of MR tankers change hand, though the enbloc sale of the Kitanihon resales were Stainless Steel tankers though would go under the category of more specialized tonnage”, the shipbroker concluded.
Nikos Roussanoglou, Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide
