Seatrade Maritime: Feeders take centre stage in container ship orders

Hapag-Lloyd announced last week that it will soon firm up a 22-ship order with shipyards, for vessels between 1,800 and 4,500 teu, in order to replace its ageing ships of this size.

In the same discussion CEO Rolf Habben Jansen discussed the growing orderbook, claiming that with 3% annual demand growth the current orderbook would be absorbed, adding that new ships will replace ageing tonnage too, potentially offsetting some of the impact that new vessels will have on the market.

Statistically speaking the growth in the fleet this year is estimated by shipbroker Braemar to be around 7%, although the researcher Jonathan Roach adds that the Red Sea diversions “Effectively offset the impact of oversupply. As a result, we expect the base-case oversupply in 2025 of around 13% to be reduced to approximately 4%.”

A round up of vessels ordered recently in this week’s Alphaliner report show two top-10 lines, Evergreen and CMA CGM having announced firm tonnage orders, Evergreen and CMA CGM.

The Taiwanese carrier is splitting a 14-ship order of 14,000 teu vessels between two yards, one in China and the other in Korea, with the French line ordering 10 ships of 22,000 teu from the northern Chinese yard in Dalian.

Vessels of this size cannot be considered as fleet replacements because container ship ordering has tended to see each new generation of ships ordered are larger than the previous generation. Hence the smaller the ship, the more likely that it is older. the older.

In addition, the smaller tonnage is generally used as feeder ships or shuttles in hub and spoke systems, with the smaller vessels distributing cargo delivered to hub ports by large mainline ships.

Alphaliner also reports that Vietnamese operator Hai An, which operates nine vessels of between 800 and 1,800 teu, has ordered two 7,100 teu ships, with two vessels of 3,000 teu also already on order and with two options on each ships size. Hai An also owns, and charters out a fleet of 18 small and medium sized ships.

German owners Bunnemann are also adding two 7,100 teu ships to be built at DSIC, adding to six similar vessels, all of the Sealion design by SDARI, that are chartered to CMA CGM.

The SDARI Sealion 4300 design was also a pick for MPC Container Ships (MPCC), a small vessel operator, which has placed an order for four 4,500 teu vessels with Jiangsu Hantong Ship Heavy Industry.

“MPCC’s four ship deal could fit in with Hapag-Lloyd’s recent requirement for two series of 4,500 teu and 3,500 teu ships. The German carrier reportedly planned to own these new vessels outright, or opt for a strategic long-term charter, and it is believed to be sitting on slots at the CIMC Raffles and Taizhou Sanfu shipyards,” said Alphaliner.

Meanwhile, Greek owner Danaos is in the market for six ships of 1,800 teu each, Alphaliner believes these will be Bangkokmax vessels that will be built by CIMC. They lift Danaos’s orderbook to a total of 23 vessels of varying capacity.

Another Greek owner, Conbulk has placed orders for two 5,000 teu ships from Yangzhou Guoyu Shipyard in China.