Orders slump

Japan’s shipbuilders have begun to suffer the fall out from the collapse in drybulk rates, after export orders fell by over 75% in gross tonnage terms last month.

Japan's export orders have dried up

A year earlier JSEA member yards secured export contracts for 31 ships of 1.3mgt, including orders for over 20 bulkers.

January’s order intake is only slightly better than the previous month when JSEA yards reported orders for only six ships of 274,970-gt.

Total orders for the fiscal year so far, April 2008 to January 2009, are 312 ships of 13.7mgt. A year ago the figure was 479 ships of 22.7mgt.

In January JSEA yards between them delivered 36 ships of 1.85mgt. Of these 24 ships of 959,920-gt were bulkers.

Tankers accounted for a further nine of the ships delivered last month (734,336-gt) with the rest being general cargo vessels (160,784-gt).

Despite the low order intake in January the order backlog at JSEA yards consists of around 1,364 ships of 66.2mgt.

JSEA recently released figures showing that export orders last year fell below 20mgt for the first time since 2005.

Members of the JSEA include Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Imabari Shipbuilding, IHI Marine United, Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding, Universal Shipbuilding, Kawasaki Shipbuilding Corp and Sasebo Heavy Industries.

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