supporttheunderdog wrote:Nikitas wrote:Underdog,
Shipping has always been a cyclical business and always will be and the ups and downs affect all owners. I wonder what Maersk with 600 ships thinks about your forecast of their business being in the shitter. The shipowners I know personally seem to be doing well, one operates heavy lifting ships, another ocean going tugs, a third LPG carriers. As for orders, no Greek shipowner has cancelled builds or options yet. So they seem to calculate that something will change.
The overall reality is that EU has no policy and no solidarity to deal with crises so they fall back on cheap slogans like the Greeks do not work, when their own surveys show that per capita Greeks put in most hours in the EU, have fewer holidays than Germans and indulge in the black economy no more and no less than most. Tax rates are among the highest in the EU.
If German economists are so smart how come they made no warning sounds when Greece was ranking No 1 in BMW imports a few years back. The surpluses of Germany are the deficits of the south, their favorite clients for anything, from cars to infrastructure and telephone systems (call me Siemens) are in the south of the EU.
And they did bribe their way to success, even in the USA who slapped them with repeated fines and agreements for restitution. The latest US scandal was only last month when Deutsch Bank, a bank for fucks sake, the temple of integrity, got fined hundreds of millions for encouraging and abetting US tax evaders!
THe latest news is that Siemens who bribed heavily in Greece is SUING Greece in a Munich district court seeking a declaration that it bears no liability for bribery, since it has already done a deal with German prosecutors to settle. These are the leaders, or that is how they would like to project themselves, of the EU and the Eurozone. They are the ones who talk about corruption and tax evasion as being problems, they should know, they create them.
I work in shipping so I may well be in better touch with what is happening than you: It is isn't shipping that is Cyclical but the world economy, and by and large when the world is doing well so does shipping. In that respect a lot of world trade is dependant on what America and Europe buy, particularly from Asia. At the moment the Americans and Europeans are not buying as much: in consequence less goods are moving. Trans-Pacific and Europe/Asia services are really feeling the pinch. There are knock-on effects in the carriage of raw materials. fuels. minerals. etc. that the Asian manufactures buy to turn into what we Europeans and the Americans buy.
The ship types you list, heavy lift, ocean going tugs, LPG, tend to be more "niche" market with fewer players, and where due to the specialisation involved, fewer people pile in . They are less subject to the cyclical problems in world trade. The bulk of world shipping is however carried in tankers, dry-bulk ships and container ships. and these are not doing so well.
In that respect I have been able to gather some more details on the earnings of prominent ship types: apologies for the fact that the columns do not line up fully
rates per day
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 May-11
Tankers
Modern VLCC 58,024 60,829 55,488 92,511 32,009 37,929 23,085 14,438
suezmax 50,700 49,590 42,595 76,634 28,211 31,259 25,048 18,275
Aframax 41,032 38,598 35,185 49,944 15,483 19,792 14,824 13,016
Product tankers 31,123 27,184 26,016 22,336 8,194 10,180 12,721 12,747
Bulkers
capeSize 47,475 41,710 103,097 90,481 36,605 30,587 5,884 5,389
panamax 21,897 21,897 47,603 41,498 14,132 20,221 11,367 13,107
handymax 21,286 21,478 45,082 38,679 15,827 12,798 11,440 11,919
Containers 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 May-11
725 TEU feedermax 9,888 12,755 8,900 9,054 7,563 3,558 4,535 6,100
1000 TEU Handy GRD 14,475 17,700 12,350 12,500 10,346 4,075 6,133 9,000
1400 TEU '' '' 23,108 27,146 17,079 16,613 14,108 4,754 6,800 12,100
2000 TEU G/less 26,267 28,750 18,392 19,696 16,313 5,054 7,467 12,600
2750 '' '' 33,850 34,813 22,646 26,292 21,958 5,638 9,942 17,750
3500 '' '' 35,621 38,427 26,583 29,958 26,125 6,575 13,250 20,000
1700DWT MPP 11,321 14,938 12,083 14,792 17,792 9,101 9,604 10,000
The figures show that most ship types are probably operating at loss. Only the 1700 DWT Multi purpose ships are operating at close to 2005 levels, and operating costs have increased.
In tankers the figures for new orders show 900 or so ships/110m DWT ion order, or 24% of the current fleet.
In bulkers the figures are 3000 ships/250 m DWT on order, or 46% of current fleet
In containers the order book represents 28% of the world fleet.
All this capacity has to be absorbed and quite simply world trade is not expected to increase that much and scrapping likewise is unlikely to make much of a dent, since there are lots of ships which are not yet life-expired and with money still owing .
What has also hurt is that in the past year Bunker prices have gone up: in August 2010 380 CST stood at about USD450, and now it it is about US$675: 180 CST has gone from 470 to just over 700 in the same period: MDO has gone from about $690 to over $1000 (all prices per tonne). These are close to 50% increases.
These fuel increases have started to alter the dynamics of world trade: with low fuel prices it was very cost effective to make in Asia where manufacturing costs were cheap: with higher transport costs it is increasingly cost effective to make more locally in Europe and the USA.
Most container lines have posted losses: they are dumping capacity - they are doing more slot sharing - some have gone altogether. Same in Bulk and tanker trades: in every trade some owners are selling ships to reduce costs and raise capital to help deal with the debts.
The only thing stopping a major collapse is the reluctance of the banks to pull the plug and be left with ships on their hands which they can only sell at a very low price, less than the debts, and behind the scenes hell of a lot of loan re-arrangements are taking place.
As for Greek Ship owners not wanting to cancel I can tell you that is not true. We had to deal with one Greek based operator who had bought a ship under construction at the top of the boom. When the market collapsed and well before delivery was due the buyer then threatened to cancel: we had quite a long /costly legal dispute with him, and he ultimately got a discount on the price of $3 Million out of about $ 75 million. It is quite hard to cancel an order without very good reason.
The problem lay withe cheap and easy credit. It ain't going to get better soon - Europe and America must start buying more, but they do not have the money. Indeed
some people think, possibly with some justification, that the worst may still be to come as they say that lurking in the background is growing US debt crises.
That is what the ship owners are probably praying about.
As for Siemens, and corruption and the *ankers and accountants, I mostly agree with you.
If Siemens have committed a criminal offence in Germany then fine, let them do a deal with the German Prosecutors but if what they did was also criminal under Greek law as far as I am concerned they separately have to deal with the Greek Prosecuting Authorities: I do not think even double jeopardy applies - seperate place seperate charges. Unless clearly agreed between the Greek and German Authorities I cannot see how any decision of the German legal authorities can be binding on Greece as that interferes with the sovereign right of the Greeks to enforce their laws in their country.
