2017 Shipping Market Review

I love data and science. Data provides a firm anchor to check against our theories. It offers the emotionless infallible reality to confirm our opinions. There is great confidence and reassurance in data. This is especially important when we shift from engineering to the world of business and the global shipping market. So many lives and jobs depend on making the right decision and anticipating the changes of the market. Guessing is simply not good enough. So I love to find articles like that offered in the Maritime Executive, reviewing the status of the global shipping fleet.

The Global Fleet Revealed

This little gem is full of graphs, tables, figures . . . oh my. Wonderful information to make informed decisions. What do you use to get solid information about the global shipping market?

Here are some of my favorite quotes from that article:

Three countries – South Korea, China and Japan – built 91.8 percent of world gross tonnage in 2016. Among these, the South Korea had the largest share, with 38.1 percent.

Shipowning is not a high-technology industry that would require the latest, most sophisticated technologies and thus provides opportunities for emerging economies. At the same time, shipowning is not a labor-intensive business, where low-wage countries could benefit from any cost advantage – as is the case for ship scrapping. It is for this reason that middle-income countries in particular have increased their market share over the last decades, while the least developed countries are not among the world’s major shipowners.

Gas carriers of LNG recorded continued high growth (+9.7 percent); growth was also recorded in the oil tanker (5.8 percent) and chemical tanker (4.7 percent) segments.

Want to learn more about the global shipping market. Another resource is Clarkson Research.

Clarksons powerful web-based information system is the most comprehensive source of data on shipping and the shipping markets.

Shipping Intelligence Network provides access to 100,000 pages of data – a source of information about the shipping industry whose range and depth is unsurpassed.