Ship Breaking Market Glum and Gloomy

October 17, 2022

Any vessels that were made available over the past few weeks have swiftly been withdrawn as recycling markets show an ineptitude to offer any sort of serious numbers, having seemingly forgotten how to buy ships after a prolonged period on the sidelines.

Consequently, there have been no market sales for another week, especially as freight markets continue to impress across all sectors and recycling markets remain unchanged, depressed, and starved of tonnage all at once.

Constant currency depreciations have been the chief culprit and there seems to be a lack of confidence to import vessels, with banks being much stricter on sanctioning precious U.S. dollar Letters for Letter of Credit (L/Cs) for vessels for recycling.

Most yards in India, Pakistan Bangladesh, and even Turkey, are therefore lying idle and will be expected to remain that way (likely) for the rest of the year, with sentiments and levels so depressed across the board.

Demand for new vessels is firming, but at completely unworkable numbers for owners and cash buyers alike, especially given the decent earnings that the majority of these ships continue to make.

As such, for another week, the outlook across all sub-continent markets stays glum and gloomy, with little meaningful activity to talk of and deteriorating sentiments and pricing afflicting the industry.

For week 41 of 2022, GMS demo rankings / pricing for the week are as below.

Demo Rank	Location	Sentiment	Dry Bulk USD / LDT	Tankers USD / LDT	Containers USD / LDT
1	Bangladesh	Weak	570 / LDT*	580 / LDT*	590 / LDT*
2	Pakistan	Weak	560 / LDT	570 / LDT	580 / LDT
3	India	Weak	550 / LDT	560 / LDT	570 / LDT
4	Turkey	Weak	240 / LDT	250 / LDT	260 / LDT