Shippax Information News

European cruise sale penetration figures compiled by ShipPax Information show that there is a huge untapped market for cruising in Europe. Although, not surprisingly, the UK has the largest penetration of cruise sales, all other European countries, apart from Luxembourg, are way behind. ShipPax Information’s Managing Director, Klas Brogren said: “I am a firm believer in that all European nations one way or another could almost match the UK cruise penetration, which in itself will continue to climb. If so, at an average penetration of 1.4%, European countries would develop another 3.3 million passengers. In other words, the global cruise market would suddenly jump another 25.6 per cent.

Figures published in the latest issue of Cruise & Ferry INFO, published by Swedish shipping media house and consultancy, ShipPax Information, reveal that South European shipyards have taken a lead in the ”market shares” of ferry newbuildings. Ferries worth $1.511 billion are now on order in the Mediterranean countries. At the same time, Northern Europe only produce new ferries worth $ 448 million whereas the Far East produces for $ 545 million, and then mostly for domestic account. But in the longer perspective, this is a trend change.

In the cruise industry, it is widely acknowledged that four main shipyards are competing for the majority of all new cruise ship orders. In its latest publication, GUIDE 01, ShipPax Information of Sweden has compiled figures to illustrate the situation in a market report. According to the outcome, the dominance tends to be strengthened if anything. The four shipyards are Kvaerner Masa-Yards, Meyer Werft, Chantiers de l'Atlantique and Fincantieri. Between them, they delivered 22,630 lower berths on new cruise ships last year. Other yards contributed with 1,968. The "Big Four" had a market share of 92percent of the capacity delivered. In the early 80s and earlier, all cruise ship deliveries came from different yards, albeit the total capacity at that time was not impressive.

Within the ferry industry, 50 secondhand vessels were sold in 2000, representing a total value of $317 million. The information, provided in a market report by ShipPax Information in its latest publication GUIDE 01, reveals that most of the activity took place within the South East Asian market, which bought more than half the numbers, or 26 of the ferries. Fourteen of them came from Japan, 6 from Europe and another 6 were bought within the region. Ferry operators in the Mediterranean sold 16 ferries, whereas Northern Europe only exported 9. Whereas in terms of numbers, the sale & purchase market was quite hectic, most of the ferries sold were small in size and representing low value. Two of the major deals of the year failed to materialise and both involved Greek ferries.

In its annual compilation over world-wide ferry transportation, Swedish-based ShipPax Information registered 854,668,842 passengers within 2002, as well as 149,489,122 cars, 815,322 buses and 22,768,383 trailers. This volume was transported on 4,342,013 trips. It virtually means that every eighth second a ferry is leaving or entering a port, and each hour, 97,500 passengers are boarding a ferry. Still, the numbers can not be complete as long as volumes are not reported from every corner of the world. Therefore, the total transportation work of the ferry industry can only be estimated at way above 1 billion passengers. As such, however, passenger shipping probably would more than equal all airline passenger figures. In addition, passenger vessels also carry a substantial number of vehicles.