According to the news of “Daily Cargo” dated Dec. 15 MOL is considering to order 6×20,000 TEU megaships. The Triple E of 18,000 TEU made by Maersk Line or 19,100 TEU by China Shipping would be thought the max size of the containership but it might be not right. The shipping lines have been cutting the costs under the severe competition. In order to make them different from others and make them competitive it could be more powerful if the shipping line could introduce the larger megaships. It is the topic of 20,000 TEU megaship while people say that the max scale of the ship would be 18,000~19,000 TEU. It must have given a big impact. It would be an epoch-making decision among the conservative Japanese shipping lines if it would be materialized. I would like to support their decision. NYK will introduce 8×14,000TEU in 2016 and K Line will receive the first ship out of 10×14,000TEU in March. So Japanese 3 lines have declared that they will deeply commit themselves to the liner business. Japanese companies and shippers that have been expanding their business overseas must feel relieved to see their commitment.
“Container transportation and containership service situation in the world” for 2014 version published by NYK would predict that the number of completion of containership would be 1.58 million TEU in 2014 and 1.84 million TEU in 2015 and 0.91 million TEU in 2016 which is less than 1 million TEU so that the issue of over-tonnage would be improved. On the other hand it expects that the movement of cargo for 2014 increased by 5% in comparison with the previous year and the year of 2015 would rise by 5~6% from the year of 2014. Therefore, this year would be expected the stable recovery in the freight rate.
IMF forecasts GDP growth ratio in the world this year like 3.8% for the whole world, 3% for USA, 1.3% for Eurozone, 1.7% for China. However, the stock exchange market in the world have been lowering since the beginning of 2015 because fear of Greece to exit the euro zone and West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures contract dropped below $50 per barrel for the first time in 5 years and 8 months. On Jan. 6 over 90% of the first section of Tokyo Stock Exchange plunged to drive down Nikkei average below 17,000 for the first time in three weeks. It had been affected by drastic drop of $331 in the New York Stock Exchange on Jan 5 and closed to lower by $130.01 (-0.7%) to $17,371.64 comparing with the previous day. This was to have been caused by the invest funds, oil money to avoid the risk. In general Nikkei average would be expected to rise to 20,000 yen level in the latter half of the year and Dow-Jones average would have more room to rise. The crude oil already would hit the bottom of price. It should be the welcome situation to the real economy if crude oil lowers. There must be many plus factors to the world economy.
The new container price is $1950 per 20f and there are around 600,000 TEU in the China factories. The half of them seem to have been already booked by shipping lines. The Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday will start from Feb. 18 and will continue for 7 days on. Therefore, the large volume of export will be expected from China this year because CNY will be 2 weeks late comparing with the one of the last year which started from Jan. 31. On the other hand there is the matter of concern. The contract extension between ILWU and PMA has not been concluded yet after expiration of July 1, 2014. Therefore, there are occurring delay of the stevedoring work and to get the number of ships waiting in the offing as a result of the freight congestion in the port after the shortage of longshoreman, slowdown in loading and unloading. Therefore, the part of import to USA has been detouring via US East Coast and Canada. However, it will cost and take time. Thus, we should keep an eye on this. It would be better to be solved as soon as possible but it would act a plus factor to the leasing companies. The reason is that shipping lines could hardly send the empty containers back to Asia from USA. Thus, it will cause a big shortage of containers in China and Asia. Leasing companies would invest more money on purchasing containers than ever. The global cargo movement would be fundamentally stable under any situation. The cargo movement in 2015 will increase more than one in 2014. Therefore, I wish the year of 2015 more prosperous to container industry.