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FLEETING STRENGTH Ranking Leading Industry Carriers
Dynamar B.V.’s biennial study on the breakbulk industry is an exhaustive analysis of breakbulk, heavy-lift and project vessel operators and services. First in Issue 4 and now here, Breakbulk offers exclusive content from Breakbulk IV – Operators, Fleets, Markets, the latest edition of the study. This issue features a market outlook and a ranking of leading breakbulk operators, written by Dirk Visser, author and managing editor for Dynamar.
T
he deadweight of all ships operated by the 25 largest breakbulk operators in Dynamar’s rankings represents 31 percent of the total deadweight of the world fleet of similar ships and 16 percent in terms of the number of vessels. Those shares are higher for their order books, standing at more than 29 percent and 27 percent, respectively. Because of their large open-hatch cargo ships, or OHCS, forest products carrier Gearbulk (first), Saga-Welco – the result of a merger between Saga42 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com
Forest and Westfal-Larsen – (second) and Grieg Star (fourth) are among the top spots in this breakbulk ranking. Two smaller operators are using OHCS as well: GMB Maritime (20th) and Westwood (25th). Completing the top five are, at third, Coscol, or COSCO Shipping Co. Ltd., part of China COSCO Shipping Corp. (COSCOCS) Ltd., the result of the recent merger of China Shipping and COSCO; and, at fifth, BBC Chartering of Leer, Germany, part of the privately owned Briese group of companies. Although the Chinese no longer use older, conventional liner vessels, their
much younger ships are quite a bit larger (averaging 25,900 deadweight tons) than those of the Germans (11,700 dwt). On the other hand, the latter’s vessels have an almost 40 percent higher-thanaverage heavy-lift capability. Three years ago, the average year of build of Coscol’s ships was 1996, compared with 2007 today; BBC’s fleet was built in 2008 on average. Other carriers in the ranking operating in more or less the same semi-liner segment as Coscol include: • Chipolbrok (eighth), plying the Europe-Middle East-Indian Subcontinent-Far East routes. • Rickmers-Linie (13th), with its eastbound Pearl String round-the-world operation. Typical multipurpose liner operators with (predominantly) scheduled services comprise: • AAL (11th), Far East-Australia and North America West Coast. • Atlantic Ro-Ro Carriers, or ARRC, (23rd), transatlantic. • Ethiopian Shipping Lines, or ESLSE (19th), East Africa-Red Sea-Middle EastFar East routes. • GMB Maritime (20th), EuropeMiddle East. • MACS (11th), North Europe and U.S. Gulf-South Africa. • PIL, or Pacific International Lines, (17th), Far East-West Africa. ISSUE 5 / 2016
TOP 15 BREAKBULK CARRIERS
Multipurpose ships (including open hatch units) of more than 5,000 dwt, ranked by deadweight capacity and including heavy-lift capability (as of February 2016).
BREAKBULK OPERATOR 1 Gearbulk Pool 2 Saga-Welco 3 Coscol 4 Grieg Star 5 BBC Chartering 6 Thorco 7 Spliethoff 8 Chipolbrok 9 AAL 10 Swire Shipping 11 MACS 12 Pacific Carriers 13 Rickmers Linie 14 King Ship HK 15 Intermarine TOTAL
TOTAL FLEET BY VESSEL TYPE General Cargo Ships Open Hatch Cargo Ships TOTAL Share Top 15
EXISTING FLEET Ships
Total dwt
54 52 58 30 120 71 49 23 19 16 12 14 12 11 32 573
2,924,000 2,573,000 1,501,000 1,437,000 1,400,000 965,000 786,000 656,000 512,000 404,000 395,000 361,000 357,000 355,000 340,000 14,966,000
ON ORDER
Total HL Avg. age 2,200 2,800 15,100 2,600 44,200 9,300 8,700 11,300 10,600 1,200 1,600 1,400 6,200 1,500 14,300 133,000
2002 2002 2007 2004 2008 2009 2002 2004 2012 2005 2005 2006 2005 1996 2007 2006
Ships
Total dwt
2 2 9 6 2 3 - 21 45
108,000 104,000 276,000 83,000 34,000 96,000 - 267,000 968,000
EXISTING FLEET Ships 3,982 297 4,279 13.4%
Total dwt 42,655,000 13,104,000 55,760,000 26.8%
Total HL
Avg. age
Dwt share
2016 2017 2016 2016 2017 2016 - 2016 2016
3.7% 4.0% 18.4% 5.9% 3.5% 14.6% - 78.5% 6.5%
100 100 4,800 4,200 200 2,100 - 14,500 26,000
HL RANK 13 11 2 12 1 7 8 5 6 20 16 19 9 18 3
ON ORDER Avg. Age 1998 2001 1999 -
Ships 201 25 226 19.9%
Total dwt 2,768,000 1,182,000 3,951,000 24.5%
Avg. Age 2016 2017 2016 -
Share 6.5% 9.0% 7.1% -
Source: Breakbulk IV - Operators, Fleets, Markets, Dynamar B.V., June 2016, www.dynamar.com
• Swire Shipping, the brand of CNCo, (10th), Far East-Australia-South Pacific. The number of Asian breakbulk operators in the ranking continues to increase. In addition to the aforementioned: • Pacific Carriers (12th), operates two commodity-focused Southeast Asia-U.S. Gulf lines using identical ships. • The breakbulk part of NYK Bulk & Projects (22th), and Eastern Car Liner, or ECL (25th), jointly represent the Japanese breakbulk/projects contribution with their rather complimentary semiliner services portfolios. • King Ship of Hong Kong (14th), and Shanghai-based Hong Union (18th), which focus on the Far East-Middle East route, and operate general cargo ships including King Ship’s four 38,000 dwt newbuilds, and Hong Union’s somewhat older 41,000 dwt vessels. In the tramping segment is BBC (fifth), Danish Thorco (sixth), 44 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com
Amsterdam-based Spliethoff (seventh), Intermarine (15th), Hamburg-based Hansa Heavy Lift (16th) and, new in the ranking, Nordana of Denmark (21st). AAL is also active in the tramping sector, while most of the trampers also offer semi-liner services. The fleets of these companies comprise generally young, somewhat smaller multipurpose/project/heavylift vessels with higher-than-average crane capabilities. These fleets average eight years, 13,700 dwt, and 320 tons of heavy-lift capacity. They also account for most of the ships on order: 42 units or 75 percent of all top 25 vessels and 541,000 tons or 49 percent of deadweight. Two operators stand out for the size of their order book: Intermarine USA with 21 units, constituting a 79 percent deadweight share of their existing fleet; and Nordana with 11 units and 63 percent deadweight, respectively.
HEAVY-LIFT CAPACITY
BBC is the undisputed No. 1 breakbulk carrier by aggregate heavy-lift capability, followed by Coscol, Intermarine, Hansa Heavy Lift and Chipolbrok. While the OHCS operators with their high deadweight ships and relatively low onboard crane capacities may now have been relegated to lower positions, they still rank 11th to 13th. There is another way of looking at the above ranking, undoing the effect of the deadweight size of ships: by average heavy-lift capability. Through that ranking, Hansa Heavy Lift would be in the lead with an average heavy-lift capability per ship of 740 tons, followed by AAL (2/560 tons), Rickmers-Linie (3/520 tons), Chipolbrok (4/490 tons) and Intermarine (5/450 tons). Then OHCS operators would be at the bottom of the ranking. Finally, a ranking could be drawn by average year of build. In that case, AAL comes out as the No. 1 with an average ISSUE 5 / 2016