ocean services
TOP 15 BREAKBULK CARRIERS
Multipurpose ships (including open hatch units) of more than 5,000 dwt, ranked by deadweight capacity and including heavy-lift capability (as of February 2016).
BREAKBULK OPERATOR
EXISTING FLEET Ships
1 Gearbulk Pool 2 Saga-Welco 3 Coscol 4 Grieg Star 5 BBC Chartering 6 Thorco 7 Spliethoff 8 Chipolbrok 9 AAL 10 Swire Shipping 11 MACS 12 Pacific Carriers 13 Rickmers Linie 14 King Ship HK 15 Intermarine TOTAL
TOTAL FLEET BY VESSEL TYPE
General Cargo Ships Open Hatch Cargo Ships TOTAL Share Top 15
Total dwt
Total HL Avg. age
ON ORDER Ships
Total dwt
Total HL Avg. age
Dwt share
HL RANK
54 2,924,000 2,200 2002 2 108,000 100 2016 3.7% 13 52 2,573,000 2,800 2002 2 104,000 100 2017 4.0% 11 58 1,501,000 15,100 2007 9 276,000 4,800 2016 18.4% 2 30 1,437,000 2,600 2004 - - - - - 12 120 1,400,000 44,200 2008 6 83,000 4,200 2016 5.9% 1 71 965,000 9,300 2009 2 34,000 200 2017 3.5% 7 49 786,000 8,700 2002 - - - - - 8 23 656,000 11,300 2004 3 96,000 2,100 2016 14.6% 5 19 512,000 10,600 2012 - - - - - 6 16 404,000 1,200 2005 - - - - - 20 12 395,000 1,600 2005 - - - - - 16 14 361,000 1,400 2006 - - - - - 19 12 357,000 6,200 2005 - - - - - 9 11 355,000 1,500 1996 - - - - - 18 32 340,000 14,300 2007 21 267,000 14,500 2016 78.5% 3 573 14,966,000 133,000 2006 45 968,000 26,000 2016 6.5%
EXISTING FLEET
ON ORDER
Ships Total dwt Avg. Age Ships Total dwt Avg. Age 3,982 42,655,000 1998 201 2,768,000 2016 297 13,104,000 2001 25 1,182,000 2017 4,279 55,760,000 1999 226 3,951,000 2016 13.4% 26.8% - 19.9% 24.5% -
Share 6.5% 9.0% 7.1% -
Source: Breakbulk IV - Operators, Fleets, Markets, Dynamar B.V., June 2016, www.dynamar.com
• Swire Shipping, the brand of CNCo, (10th), Far East-Australia-South Pacific. The number of Asian breakbulk operators in the ranking continues to increase. In addition to the aforementioned: • Pacific Carriers (12th), operates two commodity-focused Southeast Asia-U.S. Gulf lines using identical ships. • The breakbulk part of NYK Bulk & Projects (22th), and Eastern Car Liner, or ECL (25th), jointly represent the Japanese breakbulk/projects contribution with their rather complimentary semiliner services portfolios. • King Ship of Hong Kong (14th), and Shanghai-based Hong Union (18th), which focus on the Far East-Middle East route, and operate general cargo ships including King Ship’s four 38,000 dwt newbuilds, and Hong Union’s somewhat older 41,000 dwt vessels. In the tramping segment is BBC (fifth), Danish Thorco (sixth), 44 BREAKBULK MAGAZINE www.breakbulk.com
Amsterdam-based Spliethoff (seventh), Intermarine (15th), Hamburg-based Hansa Heavy Lift (16th) and, new in the ranking, Nordana of Denmark (21st). AAL is also active in the tramping sector, while most of the trampers also offer semi-liner services. The fleets of these companies comprise generally young, somewhat smaller multipurpose/project/heavylift vessels with higher-than-average crane capabilities. These fleets average eight years, 13,700 dwt, and 320 tons of heavy-lift capacity. They also account for most of the ships on order: 42 units or 75 percent of all top 25 vessels and 541,000 tons or 49 percent of deadweight. Two operators stand out for the size of their order book: Intermarine USA with 21 units, constituting a 79 percent deadweight share of their existing fleet; and Nordana with 11 units and 63 percent deadweight, respectively.
HEAVY-LIFT CAPACITY
BBC is the undisputed No. 1 breakbulk carrier by aggregate heavy-lift capability, followed by Coscol, Intermarine, Hansa Heavy Lift and Chipolbrok. While the OHCS operators with their high deadweight ships and relatively low onboard crane capacities may now have been relegated to lower positions, they still rank 11th to 13th. There is another way of looking at the above ranking, undoing the effect of the deadweight size of ships: by average heavy-lift capability. Through that ranking, Hansa Heavy Lift would be in the lead with an average heavy-lift capability per ship of 740 tons, followed by AAL (2/560 tons), Rickmers-Linie (3/520 tons), Chipolbrok (4/490 tons) and Intermarine (5/450 tons). Then OHCS operators would be at the bottom of the ranking. Finally, a ranking could be drawn by average year of build. In that case, AAL comes out as the No. 1 with an average ISSUE 5 / 2016