On the beginning of the current year, the backlog of the shipyards for container-carriers didn’t exceed 770 units. A significant loss regarding the 1,210 ships a year before. The 25 biggest shipping lines were responsible for 504 orders, against 737 a year ago.
In terms of capacity, the loss was lower but still, quite meaningful. Together, the ordered ships on the 1st of January represented 4.72 million TEU when in the beginning of 2009 the orders totalized 6.33 millions.
Here, the reduction on the orders is much more evident between the biggest world players, going from 5.67 million TEU to 3.86 millions.
This means that in one year, the share of orders of the 25 biggest operators went from 60.9% to 65.5% in number of ships, but decreased from 89.5% to 81.7% in transport capacity.
Going back to the beginning of 2008, the backlog then totalized 1,147 container-carriers, 900 of which under the responsibility of the 25 biggest players, and 6.89 million TEU, 5.47 millions of which ordered by the “TOP 25”.