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Container ships are often attributed with having
enabled the just concluded decade of
globalization. However, it should not be
overlooked that it was breakbulk vessels
carrying the out-of-box-gauge machinery to the
new production centers that allowed the China
Factor to actually take off.
Dynamar’s latest
trades and markets publication “BREAKBULK:
Operators, Fleets, Markets” focuses on the
present and future of the industry by analyzing
the main breakbulk, project and heavy lift
operators and the capability of their current
vessel fleet and order book. Furthermore, it
looks into the main market segments, recent
developments and outlook.
What is breakbulk? Simplistically, breakbulk is
any dry cargo too large for containers. That
includes heavy and/or over-dimensional units.
“Conventional” in daily shipping use is an
equivalent for breakbulk, both in the case of
cargo and the ship. “Multipurpose” refers to
vessels capable of carrying both containers and
breakbulk cargoes.
For many of the breakbulk carriers, “worldwide
tramping” is their main business model. However,
the expression “tramping” should not be confused
with the perhaps still prevailing perception of
a rather obscure company, carrying dirty and
dusty cargoes in over-aged, weary rust buckets.
Think twice! There certainly still are quite a
number of 1970/80s-built liner-type conventional
vessels around. However, a continuously
expanding part of the fleet nowadays consists of
new, highly productive, multi-employable ships
with box-shaped hulls and an ever increasing
gear capacity, operated by modern, well-equipped
and -organized carriers.
There are, and will always be, bagged cargoes,
but nowadays those move in recyclable
polypropylene big bags. Projects materials
include highest engineering-grade machinery and
complex structures, shipped by the finest
hi-tech companies. Some 200 of those are listed
in this report.
The developing world could not do without
breakbulk ships. How otherwise to bring the
generators to where electricity is urgently
needed to raise the standard of living?
Developed economies do need the breakbulk
operators to fulfill their greenhouse gas
emission goals. Breakbulk operators carry wind
turbines in large numbers and help to install
those in off-shore wind farms.
In all, the breakbulk industry has been riding
the waves of globalization very successfully.
Breakbulk-heavy lift-project cargo carriers have
become as essential to the world as box ships.
Effectively, since the start of the new
millennium, breakbulk turned around from an
ailing into a thriving industry. An initial lack
of newer, more efficient ships has in part been
repaired with the arrival of new, very capable
and productive units, while many more are on
order.
A more in-depth look at the fleet composition of
the world’s 25 largest breakbulk operators
reveals that the deadweight share of the new
ships they have signed for currently stands at
34% of their existing fleet. This is certainly a
sizeable order book. It is 25% for all breakbulk
vessels on order worldwide.
However, if all ships older than 25 years of age
were scrapped now, the total order book would
only replace 70% of the lost space. This is
where the breakbulk segment differs so notably
from the container industry, where the capacity
of newbuildings exceeds that of +25-year vessels
by more than 15 times!
Looking more closely at the breakbulk industry’s
heavy lift capacity: just over 40 units of the
Top 25 operators can handle loads of between 500
and 750 tons. The order book includes 115
vessels with a gear capacity exceeding 500 tons,
up to even 1,400 tons!
Source: Dynamar
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