By the end of October, China had maintained its top position in the shipbuilding sector with new vessel orders totaling 61.5 million deadweight tons (DWT) over January-October, or surging by 210.5% on year, according to the latest release by China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry (CANSI) on November 17.
The volume nearly doubled that for South Korea at 38.62 million DWT or Japan at 11.38 million DWT, according to the CANSI release.
“Over January-October, China’s shipbuilders saw their new vessel orders maintain a relatively high growth and their backlog increased further, while the growth in their completed vessels narrowed,”CANSI commented briefly.
Among China’s new ship orders for January-October, approximately 55.6 million DWT were for exports, accounting for 90.4% of the total or up by a massive 209.2% on year, according to CANSI.
In the first ten months, Chinese shipbuilders completed building vessels totaling 32 million DWT, or up 5% on year, against the 6.2% on-year rise for January-September, according to CANSI, among which, the volume for exports accounted for 29.9 million DWT, 93.5% of the total or up 6.8% on year, which was mainly due to the decline in October.
Last month, China’s shipyards completed building vessels at 1.7 million DWT, down 59.1% on month, Mysteel Global noted from the release.
With the substantial gains in Chinese shipyards’ new orders, the backlog for all the builders, thus, gained 38.2% on year to 98.1 million DWT by the end of October, which was also 37.9% higher than that at the end of 2020, and among the total, 89.3% or 87.6 million DWT were for exports, up 33.7% on year, according to the CANSI data.
China’s shipbuilders usually needs a minimum backlog at 80 million DWT for two years of steady operations, Mysteel Global understands.
Over January-October, China’s shipbuilders saw their total new orders, backlog and completed vessels account for the world’s 53.9%, 48.3% and 44.5% respectively, the CANSI data showed.
China’s 75 major shipbuilding enterprises under CANSI’s tracking posted their business revenue up 5.9% on year to Yuan 245.8 billion ($38 billion) over January-October while their profits declined by 22.7% on year to Yuan 1.2 billion, which was mainly due to the relatively low contract price while rising production costs, Mysteel Global noted, which was rather common for the world’s top three shipbuilding countries.
As of October 29, China’s price of 10mm shipbuilding plate was assessed at Yuan 6,323/tonne including the 13% VAT, or up Yuan 1,907/t on year.
Written by Rong Zhang, zhangronga@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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