Clarksons: ammonia-ready newbuild orders spike in 2022

Overall shipbuilding output fell by 8% in 2022, but Clarksons is projecting output to pick up by ~6% in 2023, and “become increasing dominated by container and LNG carriers (41% of 2023 scheduled deliveries, rising to 58% in 2024).”

Clarksons managing director Stephen Gordon said, “With only 131 ’large’ active yards, we estimate shipbuilding capacity is ~40% lower than a decade ago.” The figure stood at 320 in 2009.

Mr Gordon continued, “Our monitoring of individual facilities suggests only moderate or marginal capacity increases in the medium term. Shipyard forward orderbook cover has edged up to 3.5 years (from 2.5 years in 2020) and prices increased 5% across 2022 but were 15% higher on average in 2022 compared with 2021.”

As pressure mounts on shipping to cull emissions, fleet renewal becomes a priority as the industry looks to reduce its contribution to global CO2 emissions.

As part of the transition, Clarksons expects increasing underlying fleet renewal requirements as the decade develops, which will be affected by IMO’s EEXI and CII measures.

Across 2022, 61% of tonnage ordered featured alternative fuels with over half the tonnage ordered (397 orders, 36.7M gt) being LNG dual-fuel vessels, methanol accounted for 7% (43 orders, 5.0M gt), LPG stood at 1.1% (17 orders, 0.8M gt) and battery hybrid ships at 1.2%.

10.8% of orders were ammonia ready (90 orders, 7.7M gt), 1.4% of orders were LNG ready (31 orders), 0.1% were hydrogen ready and 22 orders were methanol ready.

Clarksons concludes, “2023 will have its marketing challenges for yards: macro-economic risk is material and may weigh on investor sentiment, alternative fuel choices remains tricky and newbuild prices and berth availability are a hurdle for some owners.”

“But there are ’mitigating’ factors for shipping and the product mix is likely to change: the container market will be weaker, although don’t rule out orders, possibly in feeders, but tankers and bulkers have historically low orderbooks at 4% and 6% of the fleet. Along with currency and inflation, which may ease, yards will need to be as agile as ever.”

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