Since August, with the new round of orders for super-large container ships from several liner giants such as CMA, Evergreen, Mediterranean, etc., the pace of large-scale ships that has been quiet for a while has once again aroused great concern in the industry. In August, the French CMA Group signed 5 15000TEU ultra-large container ships, including 3 dual-fuel (LNG+fuel oil) and 2 conventional fuels (with desulfurization tower); in October, Evergreen Marine disclosed 10 23000TEU ultra-large containers Container ship; In the same month, Mediterranean Shipping plans to add 5 23000TEU super-large container ships, the cumulative capacity is expected to exceed Maersk to take the throne of the world's largest liner company.

But how do you view the logic behind a new round of ultra-large container ship orders? What is the outlook for the large container ship market? Will other liner companies continue to follow up in the future? These issues are also worth discussing and thinking in the industry.

Helplessness of orders for ultra-large container ships

According to the estimation of the International Shipping Research Institute of the Shanghai International Shipping Research Center, considering the current main routes generally adopt decelerating navigation and idle capacity and other factors, the current global container fleet supply is at least about 10%. From the perspective of market supply and demand in the next 1-2 years, there has been no significant improvement in market supply and demand, and no plans have been seen to increase the speed of liner companies (the general speed increase is an important indicator of industry confidence). Under such market conditions, it is helpless for liner companies to pursue large ships:

(1) The cost per standard container is lower. The unit price of Evergreen Shipping's 23000TEU ships in 2019 is US$153 million. In 2014, China Shipping Container Lines' 19,000TEU single ship costed US$137 million. In 2011, Maersk Line's 18000TEU single ship cost US$190 million. From the standpoint of the ship construction cost per unit of TEU, it is USD 60,700/TEU, USD 0.72 million/TEU, USD 10,600/TEU, and the cost of single box construction is much lower than the former.

(2) The daily fuel consumption per unit TEU is lower. With the increase in the number of container ships TEU, the daily fuel consumption of large ships has not increased much, and the unit TEU of larger ships has obvious advantages in daily fuel consumption. However, as container ships grow larger and larger, the unit TEU daily fuel consumption reduction space is getting smaller and smaller.

(3) The helplessness of competition between large-scale ships and alliances. As the trend of large-scale ships and alliances accelerates, the east-west trunk line is basically dominated by 14000+TEU ships. If the ship type is not large enough or the number of large ships is insufficient, the competitiveness of liner companies on the east-west trunk line will be seriously weakened (see Table 1). The risk of marginalization. Traveling against the current, or retreating without advancing, can only withstand the pressure and increase the number and proportion of your own large ships. In the next 2-3 years, it can be predicted that if a liner company without a group of 18000+TEU ships is difficult to gain a foothold on the east-west route, it will face the risk of being forced to withdraw from the main route.