Review and prospect of world shipbuilding industry in 2022

I. Review and prospect of the world shipbuilding market

(1) Overall shipbuilding market

In 2022, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will still be felt, and the vulnerability of the world economy will become more prominent. Affected by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, geopolitical tensions and multiple crises such as food and energy, human development is facing major challenges, and the world has entered a new period of turbulence and change. According to the OECD's Economic Outlook report released in November 2022, the global economy is expected to grow by 3.1% in 2022, slow to 2.2% in 2023, and grow by 2.7% in 2024. Driven by long-term factors such as the dramatic changes in the structure of maritime trade, the acceleration of green transformation, and the gradual clarity of international rules, and the impact of short-term factors such as increasing global risks, slowing economic growth, and complex and severe financial environment, the global shipping industry has generally shown a slow recovery trend, but market volatility and uncertainty have increased in the short term.

The World new ship price index in 2022 moved sideways at a high level after the rapid growth in 2021, and the new ship price index at the end of the year was 162 points, an increase of 5.88%. The changes of the world new ship price index in recent years are shown in Figure 1. The three major indicators of the world shipbuilding industry generally show a trend of "one rise and two falls". Among them, shipbuilding completed 75.02 million deadweight tons and 27.51 million revised gross tons, down 13.5% and 17.2% respectively compared with the same period in 2021; New orders were 76.27 million deadweight tons and 39.11 million revised gross tons, down 44.3% and 26.2% respectively. At the end of the year, the hand-held orders were 223.97 million deadweight tons and 98.12 million revised gross tons, an increase of 25.4% and 23.2% respectively. Shipbuilding completion and new orders have declined significantly, and hand-held orders have increased significantly, reflecting that in 2022, shipbuilding enterprises are still affected by external conditions such as the epidemic situation, and there is resistance to resuming work and production, and under the background of strong macroeconomic uncertainty, shipowners' enthusiasm for placing orders to build new ships is relatively low. The second-hand boat market is more active (see chart 2). In recent years, China's ship repair load ratio (revised gross ton/deadweight ton, usually used to compare the proportion of high value-added ship types under different units) has increased, manufacturing capacity has continued to optimize, and the core ship allocation market has made certain progress. In the future, under the background of increasingly strict emission standards and the replacement of traditional ship fuel, large ship enterprises need more reasonable business strategies to cope with the fierce competition in the new situation.

From the perspective of the global shipbuilding competition pattern, China, Japan and South Korea are still mainly dominated by the three countries (see Table 1), and the market share of Europe and other emerging shipbuilding countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines is low. In terms of deadweight tons, the sum of shipbuilding completed by China, Japan and South Korea, the sum of new orders received and the sum of hand-held orders in 2022 accounted for 97.3%, 95.2% and 95.2% of the world, respectively. In terms of revised gross tonnage, the overall share of China, Japan and South Korea reached 89.6%, 94.0% and 84.8% of the world, respectively. From the perspective of the competitive situation of China, Japan and South Korea, the "three-pillar" pattern still exists, and China's three major indicators, whether calculated by deadweight tons or revised gross tons, maintain a leading position in the world. It is worth noting that from the perspective of new orders, Japan's market share has decreased significantly, and South Korea has obtained the vast majority of LNG carrier orders, and its revised gross tons of new orders account for a relatively high proportion.

(2) subdivide the ship type market

1. Oil tankers: Orders for new ships fell to a record low

Deliveries of new tankers in 2022 remained flat, but orders for new vessels continued to decline, as shown in Figure 3. Clarkson statistics show that the number of new orders received by oil tankers has fallen to the lowest level since 1996, and the future supply and demand relationship needs to be improved, especially the VLCC, Suez type oil tankers have no new orders for a consecutive year, and the new capacity of Afra type new ship orders is extremely limited. In 2022, global tanker orders totaled 6.44 million deadweight tons, down 71.1% year-on-year; Shipbuilding completed 27.61 million DWT, an increase of 6.9 per cent. In the short term, the oil price is still the primary factor affecting the tanker market, in the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine, European and American sanctions continue to increase, OPEC+ production reduction policy, international oil prices remain high, which will have a broad and profound impact on the global tanker transport market.