中国拆船业:腾龙之势

Rise of the Chinese scrap dragon

对集装箱运力进行管理能否抵消贸易增长下滑风险依然没有确定的答案。 由于绝大部分货运市场的低迷，新造船订单比起过去几年更难获得。在这种情况下，中国船厂开始另寻出路的做法也就并不奇怪了，譬如修船和拆船。尤其是在拆船市场未来几年快速增长的背景下。中国船厂码头拆船的做法有其优势——这种做法不会像印度次大陆采用的冲滩拆船法那样引起相同的争议。因此，中国拆船量近年来大幅增长，而近期印度发生的事件也可能会为未来的中国拆船业打开一扇门。

Given the weakness in most of the major freight markets, newbuilding contracts are much harder to come by than they were a few years back. In this circumstance, it is perhaps unsurprising that shipyards in China have begun to consider adding other strings to their bow. These include ship repair and ship demolition. The latter in particular will clearly be a growth market in the coming years. China has an advantage in that its quayside methods of demolition do not attract the same controversy as the beaching methods used in the Indian Subcontinent. In consequence, Chinese demolition volumes have been expanding recently, and recent events in India may open the door to further scrapping in China. Total global demolition soared in 2011, when 40.4m dwt of vessels were sold for scrap. 28.3m dwt of vessels were scrapped in 1H 2012, already in excess of the total volume in full-year 2010. In GT terms, bulkers over 25 years old account for 9.0% of the fleet, suggesting there is plenty of potential for further scrapping. Whilst the figure for tankers is lower (3.1%), freight markets have been sufficiently poor that some owners have begun to scrap vessels under 20 years of age. Demolition over 2012 as a whole is currently projected to total 55.1m dwt.