The depth of the last round of ship cycle

2) Container ships: The containerization rate continues to increase, and the global trade environment improves

Unlike bulk carriers and tankers, which mainly carry commodities, the container ship market is more dependent on the global trade environment for manufactured goods or consumer goods, and therefore more related to the increase in global trade, especially the increase in commodity trade. In fact, the process of trade globalization has accelerated since the 1950s, and the share of global trade in global GDP has risen from 24% in 1960 to 60.7% in 2008. The proportion of commodity trade in global GDP also rose from 16.7% in 1960 to 51% in 2008, which can be said that this 50 years is the historical golden period of container ship development, but also let container ships officially enter the mainstream ship ranks. From 2002 to 2007, the global container seaborne trade volume increased from the initial 73.01 million TEU to 142.9 million TEU in 2007, with a compound annual growth rate of 14.4%.

On the other hand, the proportion of global commodity trade using container transport is also gradually increasing. In the 1970s, container ships began to enter the global trading fleet in large numbers, and in the 21st century, the pace of containerization has accelerated significantly, and the ratio of tonnage of container fleets and grocery fleets in various countries has gradually increased. In 1970, the deadweight of the world's container fleet was 1.908 million tons, which was 1/38 of the deadweight tonnage of general cargo ships. By 1994, this ratio had risen to 1/2.65, and by 2002, this ratio had risen to 1/1.26. Show more obvious "growth". Considering the late start of the development of container ships themselves, although the increment of container ships in the last big cycle was relatively stable, due to the small base, so as of July 2007, container ships were the ship type with the largest proportion of orders in the total shipping capacity (the ratio was higher than that of oil tankers and bulk carriers).

Combining the factors in the above two paragraphs, we understand that the individual factors that led to the rise of container ships in the last cycle are mainly the continuous improvement of global commodity trade and the improvement of containerization rate. In fact, at the beginning of the 21st century, the trend of larger container ships began to be particularly obvious, and this in the background of gradually improving demand, but also gave shipowners the power to replace large container ships. Although the trend of ship upsizing has been intensifying since the 1980s (except for oil tankers), container ships are the ones that have really made steady progress in upsizing since the 21st century. This is mainly due to the high concentration of container ships' routes and the fixed consumption costs of container ships (fuel and port charges are fixed due to the periodic characteristics of consolidated transport). Therefore, the upsizing of ships has a great effect on cost reduction and efficiency increase. According to the China Shipbuilding Industry Yearbook, in 2008, the proportion of ships in the existing container fleet greater than 8,000 boxes was only 30%, and in 2015, the proportion increased to 80%. The above shows that the incentive for shipowners to replace large container ships is particularly strong, and in the last round of ship upward cycle, container ships have both the demand gain of "improving global commodity trade" + "increasing containerization rate" and the supply drive of "improving the capacity of shipyards to build large container ships".

3) Bulk carriers: structural changes in supply and demand led to high freight rates, and the rise of orders in 2006 and 2007

Finally we look at the bulk carrier. If before 2007, whether it is new orders or hand-held orders, oil tankers are the largest proportion of ship types, then 2007 is the "first year" when bulk carriers significantly exceed oil tankers, and up to now, bulk carriers still occupy the largest proportion of the total fleet size. From 2002 to 2005, the volume of newly signed bulk carriers has been stable, between 10 million and 30 million deadweight tonnage, and in 2006, 2007 began to increase greatly, only in the first half of 2007, the volume of newly signed bulk carriers was as high as 77.8 million deadweight tons. Corresponding to the order volume of new ships is the shipping price of bulk carriers. We review the BDI (Baltic Dry Index) and BDTI (Baltic Crude Oil Freight Index) and find that the historical volatility of BDI is significantly stronger than that of BDTI. The reason is that BDI often represents the demand for industrial raw materials in international trade, and its demand curve is rigid, that is, once it breaks through the capacity carrying range, the expansion of demand will bring unlimited price amplification. From the perspective of bulk freight rates, BDI achieved breakthrough growth from 2005 to 2007, the highest rise to more than 10,000 points, which makes dry bulk trade become particularly profitable, and bulk carrier orders are also in 2006, 2007, accompanied by a lot of speculation, passed to the shipyard.