Korea’s shipbuilding industry lost ground to its rival, the Chinese shipbuilding industry, in September.
According to Clarkson Research, a U.K.-based shipbuilding and shipping market analyst, global ship orders totaled 1.86 million CGT (71 ships) in September of 2023, down 59 percent from the same month of 2022.
Of these, Korea received orders for 120,000 CGT (4 ships and 6 percent), showing a wide gap with China, which received orders for 1.53 million CGT (62 ships and 82 percent).
Cumulative global shipbuilding orders for the first nine months of this year totaled 30.14 million CGT (1,096 vessels), down 23 percent from 39.16 million CGT (1,525 vessels) a year earlier.
Korea’s and China’s cumulative order intakes were 7.42 million CGT (168 vessels and 25 percent) and 17.99 million CGT (726 vessels and 60 percent) respectively.
At the end of September, the global order backlog stood at 122.19 million CGT, down 360,000 CGT from the previous month. Korea had an order backlog of 39.44 million CGT (32 percent) and China an order backlog of 58.15 million CGT (48 percent).
Meanwhile, the Clarkson Newbuilding Index stood at 175.38 points, up 13.26 points from the same period of 2022. By ship type, the price of a single vessel was US$265 million for liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, US$128 million for very large crude carriers (VLCCs), and US$230 million for very large container ships.
