The influential London-based Greek Shipping Cooperation Committee, known for decades as merely the “Committee”, on Monday announced what it called a record number of new shipbuilding orders by Greek interests.
The Committee referred to a 50% increase in the number of new orders (of vessels above 1,000 GT), for both Greece’s registry and Greek-owned vessels on foreign registries, based on data by S&P Global Market Intelligence during the fiscal year ending on March 2024.
Additionally, the committee referred to an increase in the number of Greek-owned and controlled vessels and transport capacity. Specifically, the number of vessels cited is 4,212, in all types of categories. The total transport capacity is 355 million DWT or 208 million GT.
Compared with the previous period surveyed, the absolute increase is 102 vessels and 5.9 million DWT.
Just as noteworthy is the fact that the figure for the vessels does not include 373 new ship orders of 33.14 million DWT.
The Greek registry, as of March 2024, contains 496 vessels, and reverses a recent decreasing trend, although a marginal drop was recorded in terms of DWT and GT.
In specific categories, Greek shipping interests control 23.7% of the global total of tankers; 16.1% of bulkers 10.1% of the LNG carrier fleet.
Overall, the Greek-owned ocean-going fleet comprises 6.7% of the global total, or 15.1% of DWT.
The average age of a vessel in the Greek-owned fleet is 13.7 years, compared to 18.2 years overall.
