Report: World’s commercial shipping fleet grew 3.5% in 2014

The worldwide fleet grew at its slowest annual rate in over a decade in 2014, according to an annual study performed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

   The world’s commercial shipping fleet grew by 3.5 percent in 2014, the lowest annual growth rate in over a decade, according to the annual report Review of Maritime Transport 2015, published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
   During 2014, the fleet grew to 89,464 vessels, with overall 1.75 million in deadweight tonnage. Total tonnage delivered for the year was only slightly more than half the tonnage delivered in the peak year of the historically largest shipbuilding cycle in 2011.
   UNCTAD noted in its report that “because several years pass between the placement of an order for a new ship and its delivery, ships are often ordered when the market is perceived as strong, only to be delivered years later, when the market may have become weaker.” In some cases, ships delivered in 2014 were ordered as long ago as 2008.
   While this oversupply may not be good news for shipowners, “it is a positive development for the revival of global trade because there is no shortage of carrying capacity and the cost of trade continues to decline in the long term,” UNCTAD said.
   According to the report, the average age of the world fleet actually increased slightly in 2014 for the first time since 2011.
   “The delivery of fewer new ships, combined with reduced scrapping activity, means that newer tonnage no longer compensates for the natural aging of the fleet,” the report said.
   Despite its economic troubles, Greece remained the leading ship-owning country, with Greek companies accounting for more than 16 per cent of the world industry, followed by companies from Japan, China, Germany and Singapore. Together, the top five ship-owning countries control more than half of the world’s fleet in terms of deadweight tonnage.
   The top 10 ship-owning countries include five from Asia, four from Europe and the United States.
   Over the last decade, China, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea and Singapore have moved up in the ranking of largest ship-owning countries, while Germany, Norway and the United States have a lower market share today than in 2005. In South America, the largest ship-owning country (as measured in deadweight tonnage) continues to be Brazil, followed by Mexico, Chile and Argentina. The African country with the largest fleet ownership is Angola, followed by Nigeria and Egypt.
   Regarding containerships, the report said the top 10 liner shipping companies operated more than 61 percent of the global container fleet at the beginning of 2015, and the top 20 controlled 83 percent of all container-carrying capacity.
   UNCTAD has designed what it calls is “Liner Shipping Connectivity Index,” which it says provides an indicator of a coastal country’s access to the global liner shipping network for containerized cargo. It said the best connected countries are China, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia and Germany, according to that index.
   The best connected countries in Africa are Morocco, Egypt and South Africa, which UNCTAD said reflects their positions at the corners of the continent. In Latin America, Panama ranks highest as the Panama Canal is the at the “crossroads of main East–West and North–South routes,” followed by Mexico, Colombia and Brazil.
   The 10 economies that rank lowest on the index are all island countries “reflecting their low-trade volumes and remoteness,” said UNCTAD.