Deferrals mean that new containership deliveries in 2018 will not damage the supply-demand balance, according to Drewry’s analysis in its latest Container Forecaster report.
The global shipping consultancy has found that container shipping can withstand more as it is balancing out with demand projections.
According to different commenters, Drewry has found that 2018 is either going to bring “a tsunami of new capacity that will drown the container market’s nascent recovery”, or — in the consultancy's opinion — newbuild deliveries will be largely manageable.
Knowing that the scheduled orderbook never matches reality (shown in Figure 2), Drewry has included forecasts for slippage, scrapping and new orders to arrive at a ‘real world’ estimate for fleet capacity over the next five years.
Read about how ports and terminals are facing unprecedented challenges in 'Mega-Alliance Impact', a technical paper by global shipping analyst Neil Davidson from Drewry
Even after the adjustments, Drewry predicted supply growth would outpace demand due to the weight of the 2018 delivery schedule in October 2017, which has resulted in a lower reading to the Drewry Global Supply-Demand Index.
In a statement on its new report, Drewry said: “Predicting containership fleet growth is probably the most contentious and hardest task for any forecaster.
“The orderbook is constantly evolving as deliveries are made and new orders come in, while demolitions and the occasional cancellation also reduce the pot.
“Furthermore, quite often the scheduled delivery date does not match with the actual delivery date, making pinning down a baseline like trying to hammer a nail in jelly.”
