US cruise giant Carnival Corp has said that shrinking its fleet due to the Covid-19 pandemic will slow its full recovery until 2023.
The shipowner’s full fleet might be sailing by the end of this year, but with a smaller fleet it will take longer to recover to pre-crisis revenue, chief executive Arnold Donald said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Carnival has sold a total of 12 cruiseships since the middle of 2020, according to figures from online valuations platform VesselsValue.
The US-listed cruise company has also sent at least four cruiseships for demolition over the last nine months, VesselsValue data shows.
The four ships — the Carnival Imagination (built 1995), Carnival Inspiration (built 1996), Carnival Fantasy (built 1990) and Costa Victoria (built 1996) — were all sent for recycling in Turkey.
In January, Carnival reported a bigger-than-expected preliminary fourth-quarter net loss as business was brought to a virtual standstill by the coronavirus outbreak.
Carnival said during its fourth-quarter result that it had “accelerated the removal of 19 less-efficient ships, 15 of which have already left the fleet”.
The shipowner said that the 19 ships represented approximately 13% of pre-pause capacity and only 3% of operating income in 2019.
“The sale of less efficient ships will result in future operating expense efficiencies of approximately 2% per available lower berth day (ALBD) and a reduction in fuel consumption of approximately 1% per ALBD,” the company said.
Carnival has recently taken delivery of two ships and expects only one more ship to be delivered in fiscal 2021, compared to five ships that were originally scheduled for delivery in fiscal 2021.
Based on the actions taken to date and the scheduled newbuilding deliveries through 2022, Carnival said that its fleet will be more efficient with a roughly 14% larger average berth size per ship and an average age of 12 years in 2022 versus 13 years, in each case as compared to 2019.
