World fleet changes in April 2006

摘要

Despite a softening in the liner market, new containerships are still being contracted, while several owners continue to exercise options related to earlier orders. Nonetheless, when certain leading and traditional financing entities engaged in the con-tainership market also look at reducing their presence in the sector, then this can represent a clearer trend that all is not well. Over the past month or so, this certainly seems to be the case, with Frankfurt-headquartered DVB Bank and Hamburg-based Nordcapital both issuing warning signals on the state of the containership market, especially for panamax and post-panamax tonnage. Although DVB Bank pointed to a positive long-term trend in container traffic volume growth at its recent annual results presentation, concerns were expressed for the short-term outlook. The bank pointed to the spate of new-builds entering service and the significant consolidation talking place in the industry, both of which it felt could lead to weaker slot utilisation levels. Already the bank has reduced its exposure to the container shipping sector. It now stands at about 11%, compared with just over 15% a few years ago.