Fundamental situation improves the chemical ship market in 2012 or recovery

The chemical ship market benefited from soaring sales of dismantling older ships in the past three years and this year’s outlook is better.

DVBBank said that due to the improvement of the basic conditions, chemical ships have more obvious improvement trends than other tanker ship types.

It is worth mentioning that a large number of chemical tankers have been dismantled in recent years, and the imbalance between supply and demand has been resolved, and the charter fee will increase significantly.

Last year, a total of 1.8 million dwt (156 vessels) of chemical ships were dismantled and sold. In 2010, there were 2.8 million dwt (140 vessels) and 2009 1.8 million dwt (86 vessels) were dismantled and sold. In particular, the dismantling sales in 2009 increased by approximately 57% year-on-year. At the end of last year, the number of chemical ship fleets around the world was about 2,605.

However, DVB stated that the uncertainties in the Eurozone and the U.S. economy have largely affected the chemical ship market.

Although the chemical market conditions are so good, the new and old shipping prices may continue to show a downward trend.

According to DVBBank, due to the lack of workload in the shipping industry and the phenomenon of the buyer's market, the price of ships will continue to decline.

The new construction cost of the 17,000 DWT-class IMO II/III oil tanker dropped from 26.3 million US dollars in 2010 to 25.8 million US dollars last year, and it is expected that it will drop to 24.5 million US dollars again this year.