South Korea’s shipbuilders won more orders than those of any other country in July with more than two thirds of the total global order book.
According to data from Clarkson Research Services, the total volume of orders received by South Korean firms was 500-thousand compensated gross tonnage or CGT for twelve vessels in July taking 74% of the total global order size.
Chinese shipbuilders came in second, winning new orders for eight ships coming to 144-thousand CGT, followed by Japanese shipyards with one ship at 30-thousand CGT.
This marks the first time this year that Korean shipbuilders have taken the top spot in the monthly global order book.
The stellar performance last month was largely due to the LNG ship order won by Hyundai Heavy Industries.
Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, a unit of Hyundai Heavy, signed a deal to build four LNG carriers for ship owners in Europe and Bermuda along with two more vessels for carrying petrochemicals and a cruise ship.
Chinese companies still topped the rankings for the first 7 months of the year with accumulated orders of 3.7 million CGT, taking up almost 60 percent of total global orders.
Korean and Japanese shipbuilders followed at 25 and 10 percent respectively.
Clarkson reported that total orders in the first seven months of 2020 were just forty percent of last year’s figure for the same period.
That’s the sector’s worst performance in a decade.
South Korea’s shipbuilders are hoping the strong orders in July mark the start of a turnaround.
However, pundits say the industry will only pick up once the COVID-19 crisis has stabilized and world cargo volume jumps back up.
Source:- Hellenic Shipping News
