Rampant newbuilding deliveries will exert further pressure on the containership market which marked modest recovery last year.
In order to curb the adverse effect of tonnage influx to the already oversupplied market, shipping companies have decided to delay some of their scheduled deliveries for this year, pushing them into 2019.
Chinese containership major COSCO Shipping has deferred ten out of 28 ultra large containerships which were scheduled to join its fleet this year. In addition, Taiwanese Yang Ming has postponed deliveries of three 14,000 TEU containerships to 2019, data from Alphaliner shows.
Despite orderbook slippage, the total boxship capacity set for delivery in 2018 is expected to reach 1.5 million TEU in 2018. More than half of these deliveries will be made up of ULCVs ranging from 14,000 to 21,000 TEU.
A huge chunk of the expected deliveries, over 1.2 million TEU, is expected to join the global fleet in the first half of the year.
On the other hand, only 350,000 TEU is forecast to head for scrapyards this year, Alphaliner said, down from 442,000 TEU demolished last year.