Yangzijiang Shipbuilding has secured a potential 10-ship order from an unnamed Japanese shipowner for 10 containerships of 3,500 teu.
The deal brings 2020 bookings at China’s largest privately-owned shipbuilder to over $1bn, excluding options, the company said.
The latest order is for five firm boxships worth a total of $198m, plus options for a further five sisterships that could take the contract value to $396m.
The five firm ships will be built at the Group’s New Yangzi yard and will be delivered from November 2022.
“Our year-to-date new order wins of over $1bn is more than that for the whole year 2019,” Yangzijiang executive chairman Ren Letian said.
“This was a remarkable achievement, especially considering that global new shipbuilding orders declined by about 50% in the first nine months of 2020 in a depressed market.”
Ren said this year’s haul gives him “great confidence” in building up Yangzijiang’s order book further, despite a weak market.
“The trade tension in recent years and the Covid-19 pandemic gave rise to increased demand for intraregional and more expedited shipping services. Smaller, energy-efficient vessels are good fits for such demand,” he said.
Trade tensions
“This batch of orders will extend our track record of building a rich portfolio of containerships with supreme features.
“Like many others, this Japanese customer has been a repeat, satisfied customer of Yangzijiang.”
Clarksons says total boxship newbuilding contracting in the third quarter stood at 12 vessels of 17,936 teu, which is nearly three times the volume booked in the second quarter.
However, it said that this was still a “historically low total”, amid ongoing uncertainty surrounding impacts from the pandemic as well as fuel and technology choices.
For the first nine months of 2020, Clarksons said containership ordering totalled 30 vessels of 180,000 teu, about half the capacity contracted during the same period last year.
The shipbroker said the boxship orderbook stood at 303 vessels of 1.9m teu at the beginning of October — equivalent to just 8.0% of fleet capacity, which is a new historical low.
Earlier this week, Yangzijiang reported a 17% year-on-year decline in third-quarter net profit to CNY 585m ($88m), while revenue was down 34% to CNY 3.58bn.
Yangzijiang said the uncertainties in the shipping market amid the pandemic had further hampered the order recovery for major vessel types.
But Ren said the shipbuilder had noticed “some encouraging signs of recovery” in the shipping market in the past few months.
