On April 2, China Shipbuilding announced that the company’s holding subsidiary, Guangzhou Shipyard International Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Guangzhou Shipyard International"), signed a number of 16000TEU (ie, 16000TEU) with subsidiaries of world-renowned liner companies on the evening of March 31. The contract for the construction of a 20-foot standard container) container ship has a total contract value of approximately US$750 million, accounting for approximately 21% of the company’s audited revenue in 2019.

At the same time, China State Shipbuilding Corporation (the controlling shareholder of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation) announced on its official website that the group's Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Dachuan Heavy Industry", a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Heavy Industries) and Guangzhou Shipyard International have successfully undertaken 13 The order for a 16,000 TEU container ship, with a total value of more than 10 billion yuan, is the largest single container ship order undertaken by China Shipbuilding Corporation.

Specifically, this series of container ships was designed by 708 under the China State Shipbuilding Corporation, and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation and Guangzhou Shipyard International built 7 and 6 ships respectively. If calculated based on the amount announced by China Shipbuilding Industry, the contract value of the 7 ship orders of CSIC is about 875 million US dollars, which accounts for about 15% of China Heavy Industry’s total revenue of 38.05 billion yuan in 2019; all 13 ships total about 1.625 billion US dollars, equivalent to RMB About 10.6 billion yuan.

Professionals said that although the total number of orders has set a new record, because the cost of a single ship is not high, and it is affected by various factors such as the increase in the cost of main raw materials and the appreciation of the RMB against the US dollar, the profit margin for tens of billions of orders is not large.

It should be noted that as China Shipbuilding completed the transaction of issuing shares to purchase assets in the first half of 2020, in addition to holding 51% of the shares of Guangzhou Shipyard International, the company also wholly-owned Jiangnan Shipbuilding, Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding, and CSSC Chengxi et al. With the increase in the scope of consolidation, the company's revenue data has increased significantly. In the first half of 2020, it achieved revenue of 23.216 billion yuan, exceeding the total revenue of 23.136 billion yuan in 2019. This means that the proportion of the US$750 million contract announced above in the company's 2020 revenue will decline.

In addition to the announcement, China Shipbuilding has also recently taken orders for a number of new-built container ships. A week ago, on March 26, Jiangnan Shipbuilding announced that it had signed three 15500TEU container ship construction contracts with Seaspan, the world’s largest independent container ship owner. Earlier, the company also won a contract for the construction of two 24,000TEU ultra-large container ships. According to Clarkson's data, the number of shipbuilding companies controlled by China Shipbuilding has totaled more than 200 orders.

The confirmation of this tens of billions of orders is only a microcosm of the recent rapid recovery in the container newbuilding market. Beginning in the second half of 2020, the container shipping market is booming, coupled with the low price of newbuildings affected by the epidemic, the “Nichijin Doujin” shipping company has begun to place orders for shipbuilding worldwide, and has generated many orders for large container ships.

On March 25, Evergreen Shipping, which is known to the outside world because its chartered container ship "blocked" the Suez Canal, confirmed that it has ordered 20 15000TEU container ships at Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea, with a total order amount of approximately US$2.478 billion; Wan Hai Shipping also announced the construction of 5 container ships with more than 10,000 boxes on the same day; Seaspan, the world's largest independent container ship owner, has ordered 37 ships "crazy" after returning to the new shipbuilding market at the end of last year.

According to estimates by Alphaliner, a consolidating consulting agency, as of March 20, the global order for new-built container ships was about 401, totaling 3.63 million TEUs, accounting for 15.3% of the current global container ship capacity, which was much higher than the single-digit level of previous years. . Among them, the order of 1.22 million TEU occurred in the first quarter of 2021, and the order growth rate has continuously set a historical record for nearly 10 years.

"Prices are rising now." The above-mentioned industry insiders said that with the confirmation of a number of recent orders, the orders of shipping companies that build container ships of more than 10,000 boxes are becoming increasingly saturated, and dock resources are becoming more and more tense. Intentional orders are still under negotiation. There is a price increase trend. According to data released by the China Shipbuilding Industry Association on March 24, from January to February 2021, China received 6.81 million dwt new ship orders, a year-on-year increase of 105%, and new orders accounted for 44.7% of the global market share.

Such intensive orders will bring changes to the current pattern of the global transportation industry. Although China Shipbuilding Corporation and China Shipbuilding did not disclose the specific information of the ship owner in the public information, an industry insider familiar with the above order told the Shanghai Securities News that the ship owner is Mediterranean Shipping (MSC), the world’s second largest container ship. Frankly speaking, the cost of a single ship of 125 million US dollars is not high. Prior to this, the company also ordered 10 24000TEU container ships in Chinese shipping companies.

MSC’s existing newbuilding orders are much higher than Maersk Line, which has the largest capacity. If the latter continues to adhere to the strategy of “no ship booking”, after the intensive delivery of new ship orders for this ship, it will give up the throne of the world's largest capacity for 25 years; it will lag behind COSCO by a slight disadvantage. CMA CMA is expected to return to the top three in the industry; Evergreen Shipping, which holds the largest number of orders, will challenge the top five position. Editor/Bao Hongying