147 Vessels Sent to Shipbreaking
So far this year 147 vessels have been sent to the shipbreakers for their steel to be recycled, Telegraph reported quoting new data from Braemar ACM shows.
A record number of container ships have been scrapped this year as owners battle a perfect storm of vast overcapacity and rock-bottom freight rates.
The Telegraph report says that the scrapping spree has taken ships with the capacity to carry a total of 507,000 shipping containers – known as twenty-foot equivalent units or TEUs, the unit of measurement used in the industry – out of the global fleet.
The largest and most modern container ships coming into service are capable of carrying more than 16,000 TEUs. In 2015 just 185,000 TEUs were removed from the fleet and this year’s level has already beaten the previous record in 2013 when 427,000 TEU of capacity was lost.
Shipowners had held off from scrapping ships as steel prices have been low for a long time, but the new, more efficient and larger ships coming on to the market appear to have driven many to take the plunge.
