Shipping crises

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The term shipping crisis refers to an economic crisis in the maritime industry as part of merchant shipping . Large-scale or even global shipping crises have developed over the past decades for various reasons. One important reason, however, is the relatively long planning and investment cycle for new ships, which leads to the simultaneous occurrence of oversupply.

The crisis mechanism

During a shipping crisis, supply exceeds demand ; with the low rates ( charter rate = rental price for a ship; freight rate = transport price per unit of a good) the ships or shipping companies concerned cannot cover their costs . Many only drive when the income is higher than the variable costs , i.e. when a contribution margin is achieved.

Semi-trailers in the port of Kiel, 2009

Typically, ships are therefore temporarily taken out of service during a shipping crisis (technical jargon: semi-trailers ). Sometimes a ship lay down for several years precedes the later scrapping of a ship. After a certain period of time, the insurance companies are ready to reduce the insurance premium .

Maritime crises affect large areas because ocean-going vessels are mobile. If there is an oversupply of ships in one trade area , ships can switch to other trade routes / trade routes . This increases the supply there, which, due to the high price elasticity , generally leads to falling freight rates.

Even if one generation of technology is replaced by the next (sailing ships by steamships, steam or turbine ships by ships with diesel engines, general cargo carriers by container ships, single-hulled by double-hulled tankers, etc.) or smaller units by a new generation of larger vehicles, there is an oversupply of cheap, used ships already economically written off. These can continue to be available without high losses, so that the old capacities are retained.

As a rule, shipping crises are followed by shipyard crises , as when the sea transport business picks up, the trailers are reactivated or used ships are bought from the stock of insolvent shipping companies. Jan Tinbergen has shown that the availability of cargo space is subject to a pattern similar to a pig cycle due to the relatively long planning and construction times for new ships .

Shipping crises in the past

In the past there have always been shipping crises, which mostly, but not always, coincide with general economic and world trade crises. According to shipping historian Martin Stopford , the 2008-14 crisis is already the 22nd since the middle of the 18th century. The advancing globalization led to global rather than national maritime crises; however, they can differ from segment to segment (e.g. tanker shipping, dry shipping). The tank freight market is particularly affected by political crises and the increased demand for mineral oil in winter. The volatility of freight rates is also very high in tramp shipping and for seasonal agricultural products . Since the financial crisis in 2008, global container shipping has been in crisis mode almost all the time; In 2016 the situation came to a head again, and at the end of 2018 it was declared over.

Examples of previous crises are

in the 18th and 19th centuries
  • the critical period of the Revolutionary Wars 1792/96 with the climax in 1793 and the continental blockade 1806–1812, which led to the collapse of part of maritime shipping in England , Spain , Norway , Germany and the Netherlands . Liverpool was particularly hard hit . Neutral seaports like Hamburg initially profited from these unrest and wars. Hamburg and Altona were later particularly hard hit by the English blockade in 1799, which was considered France's allies Denmark, and by the French occupation from 1806 onwards. River navigation on the continent was also severely damaged by the crisis. For example, since 1807 there was a slump in river navigation on the Weser, which led to the ruin of many boatmen.
  • the trade crisis emanating from England in 1847/48, which was triggered by speculation on the railways, grain and East Asia and led to a massive shortage of money. The slump in trade also affected shipping on the continent and even German river shipping, which also suffered from competition from the expansion of the German railway network.
  • the trade crisis of 1857/58 (the "first world economic crisis") after the Crimean War . During the war of 1853–1856, European, especially German, shipowners bought up American clippers to import wheat, so that transport capacities in the USA became scarce. Many new buildings were laid on the keel. Immediately after the war ended, a trade crisis broke out in the USA and Europe. Wheat exports from the US to Europe collapsed as cheap Russian wheat flooded the market after the war. This caused wheat prices and freight rates to fall in the US. The crisis in the United States was exacerbated by the sinking of Central America with several tons of gold to support the North American economy. At the same time, in Great Britain, the railroad was increasingly competing with coal transport by ship, so that freight rates for coal collapsed. This crisis hit particularly speculative investment in Dutch shipbuilding; However, after 1860 Dutch coastal and tramp shipping emerged stronger from the crisis with a new ownership structure.
  • the structural crisis after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which considerably shortened the transport times in the Asian trade and resulted in overcapacity on sailing ships. At the same time, new steamers were built, especially on the so-called short voyages, i.e. on the European coasts and in the Mediterranean. In order to remain competitive, ship sizes and construction methods of sailing ships had to be adapted in a relatively short time on long voyages (steel hull, composite construction , four masts, average size around 1000 GT ). On the East Asia route, steamships with over 2000 GT and energy-saving composite steam engines were used for the first time , which significantly shortened travel times and increased the payload due to the lower coal consumption.
  • the first phase (1873–1876) of the founder crisis , which was characterized by slumps in world trade and deflation with falling goods prices per ton and correspondingly falling freight rates. These fell in the East Asian voyage from 1873 to 1880 by more than 30%. The number of emigrants from Germany fell because the economic situation here was still relatively favorable by international standards. The result was a ruinous price war. For example, the German Transatlantic Steamship Company , which was only founded in 1872, with its three modern steamships, had to be sold to Hapag in 1875 . This crisis is considered to be the worst German shipping crisis in the past.
in the 20th century
  • the crisis from 1906 to 1908, which primarily affected American and British shipping, with 1907 marking the lowest point in freight rate development before the First World War . She led u. a. for the establishment of the Association of German Shipowners (VDR).
  • the time after the First World War from 1920 to 1924, when the demand for cargo space sank, while at the same time the war losses were replaced by newbuildings - partly by German ships that had to be delivered as reparations in 1919/20 . A local aspect of this crisis was the temporary collapse of the German fishing industry in 1923 after a high level of fish consumption in the First World War due to a lack of animal protein, which fell suddenly, while after the First World War there was a brisk construction of new trawlers .
  • The world economic crisis 1929–1934: The massive subsidization of world shipping since the mid-1920s contributed to the following crisis. In 1927 these subsidies reached around 391 million Reichsmarks worldwide . For this amount, it would have been possible to build more than 300 new cargo ships, each with a carrying capacity of 7,500 tons, at the then price of around 1.3 million RM per ship. After the global economy collapsed, imports collapsed in Europe; at the same time, the international spread of protective tariffs increased. In 1932 there was shipping space worldwide with a volume of 14.233 million gross registered tons, that is 20.4 percent of the world merchant fleet. Freight rates fell by up to 40%. At the same time, the steam drive was replaced by the diesel drive; the steamers were pushed into the unprofitable tramp shipping. From 1927 to 1937, the proportion of diesel-powered tonnage in Germany increased from approx. 10 to approx. 22%. This crisis was combated in most countries with government subsidies and regulatory measures.
  • the crisis in 1958/59, which suddenly broke in after a long phase of resurgence in world trade and the boom (at the time referred to as the "shipping lull"), in which ships with a total of 5 million tonnes of deadweight were launched, 60% of which were tanker capacity . The main reasons for this were the forced construction of new tankers in connection with the race to build ever larger units and the drop in freight rates. The rebuilding of the Japanese and German as well as an Indian and Israeli merchant fleet since the early 1950s also made itself felt in global capacities.
  • the first oil crisis from October 1973 to around 1978, in which the demand for tankers fell significantly, which had previously skyrocketed due to the closure of the Suez Canal . This sudden drop in demand led to a shipyard crisis and u. a. the bankruptcy of the Norwegian major shipping company Hilmar Reksten , who had only chartered out his ships for a short time. It was not until 1979 that freight rates picked up and a wave of new construction began. But German shipyards could benefit little from it; the competition between Japanese and South Korean shipyards had increased sharply and a realignment of the German shipyards to meet changing requirements had been neglected.
  • the crisis from 1981 to 1984, in which, after the second oil price explosion caused by the Islamic Revolution in Iran (1979/80), world trade collapsed and freight rates for oil and dry bulk goods such as ore, grain and coal fell sharply. As a result, supertankers in particular, which were often only half-loaded due to a lack of demand, were hardly needed anymore. At the beginning of 1983, 12% of the world merchant fleet was in service, 700 of which were owned by Greek shipowners. The Greek and Norwegian shipowners preferred short-term chartering because they were speculating on increasing freight rates. For large tankers, 20% of the tonnage was affected, for gas tankers approx. 33%. However, there were only 23 ships from German shipping companies (mostly in the Geltinger Bay ), as the German shipowners were hardly represented in the speculative large tanker business and only sparingly in the bulk cargo business. At the beginning of 1983 the overcapacity of the world merchant fleet was estimated at 750 super tankers, each with 250,000 tons of deadweight. These overcapacities corresponded to almost half the tanker capacity of the entire world. In 1982 the scrapping yards - at that time mainly in Taiwan and South Korea - reached their capacity limits with 25 million tons. Shipowners commissioned bulk carriers instead of tankers because they were banking on a renaissance of coal; however, the coal and ore transport also declined due to the ensuing collapse of the entire economy. The bulk cargo segment was still badly affected in the following years because the delivery of the many new buildings had only just started. The prices for second-hand ships subsequently hit a record low. Many shipping companies did not recover from this crisis, as they had to finance the construction of modern container ships with loans again in the late 1980s - when they had not yet cope with the high depreciation on tankers and bulk cargo ships. Tanker shipyards such as Bremer AG Weser (1983) were also closed. The networks of the maritime economy in Germany, which for a long time represented a factor of stability, were broken up; traditional markets were lost.
  • the crisis of 1988 resulting from the aftermath of Black Monday in 1987 . Sometimes highly indebted shipping companies increased further. As a result, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, there was an upswing in business, which, however, did not benefit the shipyards, as this created overcapacities in shipbuilding. The victim of this ongoing shipyard crisis was 1995 u. a. the Bremen volcano .
  • the 1997/98 Asian crisis . This shipping crisis had some peculiarities: Even in the following boom phase of 1999/2000, ship prices continued to fall. The boom phase has to do with the rise of the Korean shipyards and the construction of new docks (by Halla , Samsung , Hyundai Heavy Industries and the world's largest conversion shipyard, Hyundai Mipo, which belongs to Hyundai ) in the 1990s. According to the EU Commission, this development led to dumping offers because the financing costs for the loans for the construction or renovation of the shipyards are not included in the ship calculations.

If you include the last shipping crisis that ended in 2018 as a result of the global financial and trade crisis of 2008/09, almost every third of the last 100 years was a year of crisis for world shipping. The economic effects of the world wars with their high, mostly uninsured ship losses are not yet taken into account.

The global shipping crisis of 2008–2018

From 2000 to summer 2008, freight rates were high. In particular from 2003 to 2005, the strong economic growth in China meant that the demand for container transport space rose faster than the supply; Freight rates reached a historic high in mid-2005. The shipping crisis began in the summer of 2008, among other things as a result of the global economic crisis from 2007 . It lasted from 2015 to 2017 with a brief interruption and affected many segments of merchant shipping.

Prehistory of the crisis

After the Second World War, and especially since the 1980s, the volume of world trade increased rapidly, partly due to

As a result of this development, world trade and the share of ship transport in world trade expanded. Speculative overheating occurred: The new construction of ever more and larger container ships was financed without own funds and with ship loans in order to achieve fast delivery in view of the tight shipyard capacities and long delivery times. The cargo ships were largely booked out before 2008 or were chartered out at high daily rates; High prices were demanded and paid for the transport of goods . Many ships sailed at high speed to take advantage of the favorable market situation. Many new buildings were also commissioned from shipyards . Many new buildings were mainly financed with loans. However, it had to be clear to all observers that if freight rates and ship prices fell - as had happened almost regularly in the previous decades - these loans would no longer be serviceable and would no longer be covered by collateral.

The role of ship financiers and ship funds

HSH Nordbank was considered to be the largest ship financier worldwide ; other large banks in this area were Nord / LB and Commerzbank . The Handelsblatt numbered in an article dated June 1, 2013 the loan volume of 27 billion, 18 billion and 16 billion euros. By February 2013, German banks had granted loans amounting to over 100 billion euros to finance ships.

A ship fund (also called ship participation), on the other hand, is a closed fund that invests the collected capital in the construction and / or acquisition of ocean-going vessels . How can generally in closed-end fund investors / investors to the fund only during the placement period to join. The ship funds buy merchant ships from equity raised; if they bought them 100% from equity, they were independent of outside capital (e.g. bank loans). After the required equity has been raised, the fund is closed.

The activity of the ship funds has contributed to the oversupply of ships. This was made possible by tax-saving models, under which taxpayers with high income tax rates bought ship funds. Before entering into a contract, investors were not always adequately advised about the risks of this type of investment, which made them limited partners who have no right to a fixed interest rate or a fixed repayment date for their investment, but who are liable for losses with their entire investment. In Germany (through the introduction of § 15b EStG in December 2005) closed funds with initial tax losses (tax deferral models) were practically abolished.

Many newly built fund ships are chartered out on a long-term basis. The ships are rarely bought 'at random' or speculatively, but usually when an owner can manage them himself or when he has a tenant for the ship who leases it for the long term and for a price that appears reasonable to the owner. Most German shipping companies charter out their ships; this means that they are exposed to the risks of falling freight rates and fluctuating capacity utilization. In the course of the shipping crisis, experienced and relatively solvent charterers also got into financial difficulties. In such cases, the shipowner is faced with the question of whether he should insist on the fulfillment of the contract (with the risk that his tenant files for bankruptcy) or whether he wants to meet him financially (e.g. lowering the charter rates and at the same time extending the charter contract ; Reduction without consideration by the tenant; deferral of (over) due rent, etc.).

In April 2013, the FAZ wrote about the speculative bubble that had developed in the shipping industry :

“The shipowner asked the investors, who were connected [in an internet conference], to inject more money and thus prevent an emergency sale of the freighters. If the ships had to be dismantled, this could result in the total loss of the invested capital. Thousands of investors in Germany are faced with similar demands. Before the Lehman bankruptcy, more than 3.5 billion euros invested money flowed into closed ship funds a year. Banks were all too willing to give loans, fueling a new construction boom that resulted in a massive oversupply of shipping tonnage. According to calculations by Deutsche Fondsresearch, the resulting wave of bankruptcies has already driven around 170 fund ships into bankruptcy. "

Tonnage at the beginning of the 2008 crisis

The tonnage supply of the world merchant fleet rose in the course of 2008 by 6.8% to 1,153.3 million dwt.

  • Crude oil tanker 36.3% (418 million dwt),
  • Bulk (bulk carrier) 35.9% (414.4 million dwt)
  • 4,639 container ships with a share of 14.0% (162 million tons dwt),
  • General cargo ships with 9.3% (106.8 million t dwt). "Dwt" stands for dead weight tons (total carrying capacity of a merchant ship).
Ship type
 Number Jan. 1, 2008 in million dwt Number Jan. 1, 2009 in million dwt Number Jan. 1, 2010 in million dwt
Crude oil tanker 8693 399.8 9159 418 9740 452
Chemical tanker 1345 9.3 1347 9.4 1331 8.5
Liquefied gas tankers 1318 30.2 1419 9.4 1331 8.5
Bulk carriers 7156 386.6 7481 414.4 7772 451.2
Container ships 4259 144.6 4639 161.9 4706 169.5
General cargo ships 17647 102.8 17949 106.9 17715 105.8
Passenger ships 4135 6.2 4161 6.8 4195 6.4
total 44553 1079.5 46155 1153.3 46948 1234.2

Source:

Even after the start of the shipping crisis, ships continued to be built (or even commissioned); they increased the oversupply on the market.

evaluation
 Growth in 2008 in million dwt in dwt / ship Increase in 2009 in million dwt in dwt / ship
Crude oil tanker 466 18.2 39,056 581 34 58,520
Chemical tanker 2 0.1 50,000 −16 −0.8 50,000
Liquefied gas tankers 101 5.7 56,436 70 4.9 70,000
Bulk carriers 416 64.6 104,870 291 36.8 126,460
Container ships 380 17.3 45,526 67 7.6 113,433

In 1987 the IMO ( International Maritime Organization , a UN organization) decided that every large merchant ship must have a ship number; Since around 2002 there has been a requirement to have the IMO number (permanently attached physically) on the outside of the ship's hull and also in the engine room. In the past, the tonnage existing worldwide was not completely transparent due to the renaming of ships; today it is publicly known (also thanks to the Internet). IHS Fair Play published

  • quarterly (and an annual overview) 'Global Maritime Trade Statistics Reports',
  • monthly 'World Shipbuilding Statistics'
  • yearly 'World Fleet Statistics' and 'World Casualty Statistics' (casualties = losses).

Outbreak of the crisis

In autumn 2007 a real estate bubble burst in the USA , which expanded into a subprime crisis . The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 attracted worldwide attention . In the autumn, the banking crisis spread to the real economy ; a recession began in most developed and emerging economies , which was to prove significant in 2009.

For 2008 the world economy grew by 1.7%. This was the weakest since 2001. World trade only grew by 2.0% in 2008 (2007 = 6.0%; average of the previous 10 years 5.7%).

As a result, the supply and demand for freight capacity has changed since mid-2008 : the former rose, the latter initially fell significantly and only rose again since around 2010, but less than the supply. As a result, there is still excess capacity on the market today (2017) , and freight and charter rates are mostly at a low level. Many ships can no longer earn interest and / or repayment.

The prices for modern used ships also fell as a result; there were distress sales and sales from bankruptcy estates . Whereas before 2008 ships that were twenty or twenty-five years old were sold and continued to be used, since then newer ships have often been scrapped due to lack of demand (“ scrapping ”). The crisis hit the shipbuilding industry in full in 2009; deliveries fell sharply. This found its expression in falling prices on the market for ship scrap: in mid-2008 it reached a high of 650 US dollars / ton; In early 2009 it was around $ 200 and in March 2010 it was around $ 400.

In 2009 the global gross domestic product fell by 2.3% compared to the previous year. The industrialized nations recorded a decline of 3.6% in real gross domestic product, the EU by 4.1%. Export-oriented economies such as Germany and Japan were particularly hard hit by the recession. In terms of prices, the volume of world trade fell by 23%, primarily as a result of falling oil and other commodity prices.

The revenues of the shipping companies fell significantly. Only Hapag-Lloyd booked from 1.1. up to September 30, 2009 loss of 350 million euros; in summer 2009 the company had to apply for a state guarantee ; this was approved in September 2009. In September 2010, Hapag-Lloyd was able to return the guarantee.

At the beginning of February 2009, Senator Lines announced that it would cease business operations.

Since the oil prices had fallen sharply at the same time, oil companies rented open tankers in order to store crude oil in them until the price increased. The leased capacity for 2009 was estimated at over 100 million barrels.

One factor softened the crisis somewhat: the cargo ships can reduce their fuel consumption by up to 50 or 60% by moving slowly (" slow steaming "). However, these savings are offset by higher fixed costs ( wages , depreciation, financing costs due to increased capital commitment) per trip. However, there is more tonnage in circulation to handle the same amount of freight.

Market recovery 2010–2011

In a year-on-year comparison with 2009, the strongest growth in German foreign trade since the 1973 oil crisis was recorded, even if Germany, as long-standing export world champion, had to surrender its title to China. In 2011, the value of Germany's exports exceeded EUR 1,000 billion for the first time, and the value of both imported and exported goods in 2011 was again above the pre-crisis level of 2008.

The 2011 annual report of the German Navy reported:

“On January 1, 2011, the world merchant fleet comprised 47,833 units over 300 GT with a carrying capacity of 1,349 million dwt [..]. Compared to the previous year, the tonnage increased by 9.3%. [...] During the same period 1,344 ships with a tonnage of 28.8 million dwt were scrapped. The number of new orders was 2,231 ships with a total tonnage of 144.4 million dwt. [...] At the beginning of 2011 the world merchant fleet had an average age of 17.5 years. In comparison, she was almost two years older at the beginning of 2006. One reason for this is certainly the scrapping of the older tonnage that have been unemployed in recent years. "

- Annual report of the German Navy 2011

However, the German merchant fleet continued to grow by 9.9% in 2010. According to the BSH ( Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency ) and VDR, the German shipowners and shipping companies operated 3,716 merchant ships with 83.66 million GT and 112.88 million dwt on December 31, 2010 . At the beginning of 2011, the container ship fleet controlled by German shipping companies comprised a total of 1,776 container ships over 1,000 GT with 62.3 million dwt (5.27 million TEU; 32.1% of global container capacity).

The annual report wrote about world shipbuilding:

“World shipbuilding production reached a new record level in 2010 with 3,706 ships delivered and 51.2 million cgt, which exceeded the previous year's volume by around 16%. Due to the massive expansion of capacity, China's shipyards have achieved their industrial policy goal of becoming the world's leading shipbuilding country by 2015 with 18.8 million cgt and a market share of around 36%. The more than 2,500 newbuilding orders with 38.6 million cgt represented a significant increase of 133% compared to 2009. With a share of 51%, bulk carriers dominated global orders even more clearly than in previous years. Since the deliveries again significantly exceeded the incoming orders and 577 cancellations with 10 million cgt were reported worldwide (2009: 11.5 million CGT), the order backlog at the end of December was reduced to 7,822 ships with 128 million cgt (−16%) . This means that the overhang at the end of 2010 was halved compared to the beginning of the year, which can essentially be attributed to the market adjustments caused by cancellations. "

- Annual report of the German Navy 2011

In this situation, the Maersk Line gave the go-ahead for a further increase in predatory competition in sea transport. Despite the oversupply of tonnage, Maersk ordered 20 newbuilds of so-called mega-liners from Korean and Chinese shipyards, where they are being built at an unrivaled price thanks to government subsidies. With the 400-meter-long and 60-meter-wide ships with spaces for 18,000 20-foot containers, up to half the costs for fuel and personnel can be saved. By 2016, over 150 of these ships had been delivered, displacing smaller ships, some of which had to be sold for scrap value.

The withdrawal of banks from shipping finance

In the first half of 2012, the price for heavy fuel oil (= "bunker" = HFO) (ie ship fuel) reached new record highs of more than 720 US dollars per ton. The average price of a major German shipping company was 605 USD / t bunker in 2011 and only around 450 USD / t in 2010.

In mid-2012, Commerzbank announced that it would no longer issue new loans for ship financing and would gradually withdraw from this business area. In mid-2012 Commerzbank had loans for ships and shipping companies in the amount of around EUR 20 billion on its books, which increased the requirements for risk provisioning.

For the shipowners, the withdrawal of the banks, which had "cheerfully flanked and fueled the shipowners' blind mania for orders with loans", also meant the end of bridging, restructuring and modernization loans from ship financing. At most, the banks agreed to deferred repayment. Many shipowners were forced to sell the ships for scrap prices.

The Nord / LB presented in its balance sheet for the year 2012 598 million euro loss provisions one (2011: 197 million). In the report for the 3rd quarter of 2012, Nord / LB u. a .:

“In the ship segments, the situation deteriorated even further in the course of 2012 in some cases. In the container segment, the number of trailers rose in September after the so-called peak season was less long than expected this year. The deliveries of large-volume ships hit a weak market and have a negative effect on the development of rates. The freight rate indices continued to decline. The corresponding charter rate developments also showed weakness again. For example, HARPEX fell to 373 points in September after this time charter index had already reached 458 points in May.

A growth in demand of only 5 percent in 2012 contrasted with an increase in the bulk carrier fleet of around 9 percent. The Baltic Dry Index fell to an annual low of 647 points. The slowdown in the global economy also had an impact on the tanker segment . The Baltic Dirty Tanker Index , which reflects the development of the crude oil tanker market, reached its low of 604 points in August. The tonnage supply in the tanker segment continues to grow unabated with the number of deliveries (2012 approx. 446 million dwt), while the demand side hardly received any impetus (2012 approx. 346 million dwt). "

In February 2012 the Odense Staalskibsværft (Odense Steel Shipyard) was closed. 2006-2008 she had the eight per 14,770 TEU comprehensive container ships of the Emma Mærsk class built, until the commissioning of the CMA CGM Marco Polo in November 2012 were the largest ships of its kind. Even large Korean shipyards could no longer survive in the price war for standard ships against the Chinese competition.

In February 2013, Andreas Dombret , member of the board of the Deutsche Bundesbank , outlined the consequences of the crisis for the banks. The financing of ever larger ships and a "plunge in freight rates into unimagined depths" represent a considerable risk for banks. A cocktail of far too optimistic expectations and unsustainable borrowing led to the crisis in the shipping industry. Ship finance is a significant regional and sectoral risk in the banking sector (" cluster risk ").

“The almost unchecked increase in capacities [aggravates] the situation further, since in times of cheap financial resources and optimistic expectations the order books of shipyards around the world have filled. An additional burden is the fact that larger and larger ships are being ordered for cost reasons and the smaller ones are gradually being scrapped. "

The Nord / LB presented in 2013 a total of 846 million euros for loan loss provisions , a (of which probably the majority of the shipping sector); it closed the full year 2013 with a pre-tax profit of EUR 161 million.

On April 22, 2013, HSH Nordbank announced that it had developed a new type of financing approach for insolvent or highly insolvent ships together with the Navios Group, an international shipping company.

In the first ten months of 2013, almost 100 fund ships went bankrupt. According to industry experts, more than 1,000 freighters owned by fund companies were not generating enough money to service the loans they had taken out. That corresponded to about a third of the entire German merchant fleet. In many cases, neither the investors nor the financing banks were willing and / or able to inject new capital.

Only in the case of bulk carriers, freight rates rose sharply again in 2013. The leading index 'Baltic Dry' rose from 700 points to 1400 points in the middle of the year and to over 2100 points at the end of September.

By 2014, the global container fleet had almost doubled its capacity compared to the last year before the crisis, 2007. In July 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) presented a study on the state of shipping. Accordingly, the capacity utilization of the ships was still completely unsatisfactory. The revenue situation remains extremely difficult, especially in container shipping. The shipping companies and other market participants would have to use every opportunity to cut costs in order to stay in the market. In the 46th calendar week alone, the freight rates for container transports from Asia to Europe fell by 20.5 percent. By autumn 2014, 450 closed ship funds with a total loss of up to 10 billion euros over the past few years were reported to have gone bankrupt . Towards the end of the year, the falling freight rates and the falling volume for oil, ore and other bulk goods transports as a result of the fall in energy and raw material prices also had a negative impact.

The renewed worsening of the crisis by the growth crisis of the emerging countries in 2015

Around the turn of the year 2014/2015, commodity trading companies such as Vitol and Trafigura and the energy group Shell began again to bunker crude oil in older, long-term leased large tankers, because they were speculating on a rebound in oil prices. In early January 2015, it was estimated that floating storage capacity was leased for 12 to 15 million barrels. This speculation did not work out, however; the oil price fell further in summer 2015. The freight rates for coal, iron ore, bauxite, etc. ( dry bulk carriers ), which had increased almost tenfold between 2002 and 2010, also fell at the beginning of 2015 to their lowest level since the 1970s. The expansion of the Suez Canal in 2014/15 had little impact on shipping, as it was only 70 percent full before. That roughly corresponded to the workload in the early 1950s.

After the tonnage of the laid-up small and medium-sized container freighters had fallen sharply by spring and the ship financing got underway again, the end of the shipping crisis was prematurely announced. The growth driver was the African market. China in particular imported raw materials and agricultural goods from Africa and built infrastructures for this in various African countries.

However, as early as late summer 2015, there were signs of another drop in freight rates in the wake of the crisis in raw material exporting and emerging countries. Container handling in the Port of Hamburg, which at 9.7 million (TEU) had not yet reached the 2007 level by 2014, suffered particularly from the development in China, as handling to and from China in 2014 alone accounted for 2.97 Million TEU. While Hamburg's sea trade with China fell by around 11 percent in the first half of the year, sea trade with Russia even fell by around 35 percent. Overall, container throughput fell by around 7 percent during this time, compared to the year as a whole by 10 percent. Container throughput in Bremerhaven also fell by almost 4 percent in 2015.

The pressure to cooperate and merge on the shipping companies increased. The Chilean Compañía Sud Americana de Vapores and Hapag-Lloyd merged their container services to the west coast of South America in the summer of 2015. Various services from Asia to Europe were discontinued in autumn 2015 in order to stabilize freight rates. From autumn 2015 to January 2016, Hapag-Lloyd decommissioned 23 container ships.

Consolidation phase 2016–2018

Although the global economy and maritime trade were forecast to pick up in 2016 towards the end of 2015, freight rates fell again after a brief increase in the course of spring, which further increased the pressure on shipping companies to merge and cooperate. Every temporary upward trend in freight rates was interpreted as an upward trend and led to new orders. In 2016, as new Ultra Large Container Ships (ULCS) kept coming onto the market, it became apparent that the crisis would become chronic. Experts estimated that an overcapacity of 1500 container ships would have to disappear from the market. The expansion of the Panama Canal , completed in June 2016, also had capacity effects due to the fact that larger units could now be used. As a result of this overcapacity, the depreciation of ships that are no longer used at the hoped-for charter rates rose considerably. So exceeded z. B. the loss of Rickmers Maritime in Singapore by almost half the total turnover. In some cases, the current ship values ​​were no longer sufficient as collateral for the loans, so that the banks demanded additional collateral from shipping companies and ship funds. Many ships therefore had to be sold under pressure from the banks. Large shipping companies that charter additional ships from time to time gave them back to the cheaper, larger container ships that were to be operated, thus increasing the pressure on smaller shipping companies who live from chartering their ships.

With a debt burden of 5 billion US dollars, the South Korean shipping company Hanjin , one of the largest shipping companies in the world, had to file for bankruptcy and apply for bankruptcy protection in September 2016 . Many of Hanjin's loaded container carriers were unable to call at ports because port authorities feared that port costs would not be paid. This also applied to ships chartered by Hanjin. The bankruptcy of Hanjin meant that ships were temporarily out of the market. However, most of the other shipping companies had to record a drop in profits in the container business in 2016, despite increasing market shares.

At the beginning of December 2016, negotiations about the takeover of Hamburg Süd by Møller-Mærsk were announced. In October the three largest Japanese container shipping companies NYK , MOL and "K" -Line decided to merge their container activities and to operate them under a new name from July 2017 onwards. This would create the sixth largest shipping line in the world.

In the course of the year, orders for new buildings fell sharply. The world's largest shipyard, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries , announced in May 2016 that it would reduce its workforce by 10 percent and sell $ 1 billion in fixed assets.

In the summer of 2016, the Bremer Landesbank collapsed under the pressure of unpaid ship loans, which caused losses in the three-digit million range for the state of Bremen. Other ship and transport financiers such as DVB Bank and Nord / LB also came under massive pressure again in the second half of the year due to problem loans. Above all, the losses of HSH Nordbank, for which the state guarantees had already been expanded to ten billion euros in 2013, are estimated at 16 or even 20 billion euros at the end of 2016, for which the federal states of Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein must be responsible.

Nord / LB reacted in 2016 to the further intensification of the global shipping crisis with a massive increase in its risk provisioning and posted a loss for the first time since 2009 (almost two billion euros).

The DVB Bank had borrowed at the end of March 2017 more than 11 billion euros to the shipping industry and more than 2 billion for financing oil platforms and for necessary care and specialized vessels. Many shipping companies were unable to repay the loans, so the bank closed 2017 with a pre-tax loss of € 863 million.

The major shipping companies (of which there is only one in Germany) entered 2017 with negative prospects. The crisis from 2008 to 2016 was now considered the longest and most severe in the industry since the founding crisis in 1873. The consolidation process of the shipping companies continued continued: The world's fourth largest container shipping company, COSCO Shipping, is buying its smaller rival Orient Overseas Container Line ( OOCL ) from Hong Kong for the equivalent of 5.5 billion euros. In March 2017, Dr. Oetker Group sold Hamburg Süd to the Danish Maersk Line for 4.7 billion euros. The Rickmers Holding went with 114 rentals and 39 self-operated vessels in June 2017 bankruptcy because hardly any ships are chartered and HSH Nordbank rejected a restructuring plan.

Of the world's top 20 container shipping companies before the onset of the crisis, cutthroat competition meant that almost half had disappeared by 2018. The HWWI and the Berenberg Bank expect container shipping to decline in importance as the trend towards globalization of value chains expires .

At the end of 2018, the crisis was generally considered over. But with 2359 ships with German owners, more than a third fewer were on the move in 2011 with 3784 ships. In addition, German banks and ship financiers had largely withdrawn from the market and sold ships below their value. New investors mostly come from abroad, which means that the loyalty of German shipping companies remained under pressure.

Recovery 2019

In the summer of 2019, freight and charter rates in container shipping rose, especially for large ships. Because of the shortage of large ships, the charterers sometimes switched to smaller units. From 2000 TEU there was practically full employment. The demand for new container ships also increased. The Evergreen Line alone ordered 65 new ships, the CMA CGM 28 and the Yang Ming Line 24. Decisive for this were the low interest rates and thus the low ship financing costs, but also the fact that Taiwan and thus Evergreen and Yang Ming from the trade dispute the US and China benefited. In addition, there was a temporary shortage of shipping space not only in container but also in bulk shipping, because in preparation for the new fuel regulations of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that will apply from January 1, 2020, many ships are being sent to the shipyards to have exhaust gas cleaning systems ( Scrubber ). This means that cheaper, more sulphurous fuels can still be used. The charter demand for tankers also increased due to the Iran crisis. However, freight rates for bulk cargo collapsed again in the last quarter of 2019.

The recovery was helped by the fact that at the end of 2019 ships with a capacity of only ten percent of the world fleet were on the shipyards' order books, compared to 50 percent in 2009. However, during the Corona crisis since March 2020, the freight volume fell again. In May 2020, more than 11 percent of all container ships worldwide were decommissioned.

Economy of large container ships

Since around 2007, various investigations and simulation studies have dealt with the analysis of the influence of the growth in size of new container ships on their profitability. It is sometimes feared that the marginal utility of the rapid growth in ship sizes (measured in TEU) will decrease or even become negative, so that there could then be a sudden scrapping action, as happened with large tankers. In 1981 the largest newbuildings had a capacity of 3,800 TEU. In 1988, the Panama Canal's width limitation was broken. With the rapid economic growth in China in the 1990s, there was a leap in development: in 1995 the maximum capacity was approx. 5,000, in 2008 approx. 10,000 and in 2016 even 19,000 TEU; d. H. on average, the transport capacity of the largest ships doubled every ten years. However, while the fixed costs developed disproportionately to the size of the ship and are still falling, port logistics is a bottleneck that increases the lay times for the largest ships disproportionately. In addition, when fully loaded, these ships can only call at around 10 seaports worldwide. For ships of over 13,000 TEU, the port idle times increase by leaps and bounds to up to five days. These disadvantages cannot be compensated for by feeder traffic , since multiple handling is too time-consuming and expensive.

The study by the HWWI and the Berenberg Bank assumes that the volume of finished product transports will decrease in the future, while the importance of raw material and energy transport will increase again. (The share of tankers in the total cargo had almost halved between 1980 and 2017.) With the digitization and networking of ships and ports, however, there are also new possibilities for increasing the profitability of container shipping.

Others

Indices

The Association of Hamburg and Bremen Ship Brokers e. V. has been determining and publishing the ConTex Index (Container Ship Time Charter Assessment Index) since October 11, 2007 in order to map charter rates (in US dollars) for container ships. Such indices increase market transparency . In May 2010 the index was expanded and differentiated; since then it has been called the New ConTex Index . The index started with 1000 points; it fell below 250 from July 2009 to February 2010. In April 2011 it fluctuated around 700, on October 23, 2014 it was 373 with a downward trend. This shows the volatility of the charter rates shown.

There is also the Baltic Clean Tanker Index , the Howe Robinson Container Index (HRCI, London) and - as mentioned above - u. a. HARPEX , Baltic Dirty Tanker Index and Baltic Dry Index .

The Baltic Dry Index fell in 2015 after explosive increases in 2004-2008, 2010-2011 and 2013-2014 in February 2016 to a 28-year low of 291 (December 2013: 2330). In the case of the index, the decline in expectations of economic growth in the emerging countries and the skepticism about further relocation of production to low-wage countries and the associated expansion of world trade are expressed.

The RWI / ISL Container Handling Index (RWI = Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung ; ISL = Institute for Shipping Economics and Logistics ) is a seasonally adjusted index that shows container handling volumes. It includes information on container handling in currently 73 international ports, which account for around 60% of global container handling.

Statistical peculiarities

For many years, statistics have shown that world trade is growing faster than z. B. the added gross domestic product of the countries. That may in part actually be the case; In addition, there is a multiple-counting effect that cannot be quantified: Many production and supply chains are more globalized than before. Components are manufactured in locations in different countries; happen during the production process e.g. B. Semi-finished products sometimes several national borders before they reach their final destination. The goods trade statistics record the value of goods every time they cross a national border. If the value for world trade is then determined from this data, multiple counts occur. Its scope can hardly be recorded, since the relevant data are difficult to access.

If you want to determine the quantities and values ​​of Germany's imports and exports to overseas countries, it would be easy if these were carried out exclusively via German seaports. But in fact (eg., A significant share of German foreign trade volume in foreign seaports Marseille / oil port of Lavera , Genoa port or port of Rotterdam ) overcome; it is transported to and from Germany by road, rail, barge or pipeline. The annual reports of the German Navy cited in this article also point to this statistical problem; the numbers quoted cannot therefore be entirely precise.

literature

  • Lars U. Scholl, David M. Williams (Eds.): Crisis and Transition. Maritime Sectors in the North Sea Region 1790-1940. (= Series of publications by the German Maritime Museum Bremerhaven). Hauschildt Verlag, Bremen 2008. ISBN 978-3-89757-381-9 .

Web links

The UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) has published an annual report on maritime shipping with the title Review of Maritime Transport yyyy (yyyy = year) since 1968

The yearbooks each refer to the previous year (e.g. the 2012 yearbook covers the year 2011).

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Martin Stopford: Globalization and the Long Shipping Cycle , RINA President's invitation lecture cycle, November 11, 2009, [1] ; see also ders .: Maritime Economics , Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0-415-27558-X
  2. ↑ Tore L. Nilsen: Crisis and Transition: Norwegian Shipping and Commerce in War and Peace 1792-1825. In: Scholl / Williams (eds.), P. 32 ff.
  3. ↑ Silvia Marzagalli: The French Wars and North Sea Trade: The Case of Hamburg. In: Scholl / Williams (eds.), Pp. 20ff.
  4. ↑ Jan Kruse: History of shipping on the Oberweser Archived copy ( Memento of the original from February 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Accessed June 24, 2014 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.flotte-weser.de
  5. ↑ Commercielles , in: Extraordinary supplement to No. 117 of the Leipziger Zeitung , April 26, 1848, p. 2276.
  6. ^ Karl Marx: The trade crisis in England. In: Marx-Engels Werke (MEW), Vol. 12, Berlin 1961, pp. 335–338.
  7. ↑ Stock exchange history on www.boerse.de
  8. ^ David M. Williams: Crisis and Transition in North Sea Maritime Sectors: An Introduction. In: Scholl / Williams (eds.), P. 14; John Armstrong, Roy Fenton: Crisis and Response in the British East-Coast Coal Trade to London 1850-1900. In: Scholl / Williams (eds.), P. 48 ff.
  9. ^ Femme S. Gaastra: From Crisis to Prosperity: Dutch Shipping 1860-1913. in: Scholl / Williams, p. 75 ff.
  10. ^ Yrjö Kaukiainen: The Transition from Sail to Steam - Growth and Crisis during a Technological Change. In: Scholl / Williams (eds.), P. 62 ff.
  11. ↑ Kaukiainen, p. 65.
  12. ↑ Kaukiainen, p. 65 f.
  13. ^ Sven Helander: The international shipping crisis and its global economic significance. (= Problems of the World Economy 42), Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1928.
  14. ↑ Ingo Hein Brink: Marketing and Technological Changes in the German Deep-Sea Fishing Industry. In: er Scholl / Williams, p. 102 ff.
  15. ^ FP Siegert: The subsidies of world shipping and their socio-economic effects. Berlin 1930.
  16. ↑ Hartmut Rübner: Concentration and Crisis of German Shipping. Maritime economy and politics in the German Empire, in the Weimar Republic and in National Socialism. (= German Maritime Studies, Volume 1.) Verlag HM Hauschild, Bremen 2005, ISBN 978-3-89757-238-6
  17. ↑ Stig Tenold: Crisis? What Crisis? The Expansion of Norwegian Shipping in the Interwar Period. In: Scholl / Williams, p. 120.
  18. ↑ In December 1958, the largest tanker in the world at the time with a deadweight of 104,520 tons, the Universe Challenger from the shipping company Bulk Carriers, Inc. New York, was launched at a Japanese shipyard. Race in the construction of giant tankers , DIE ZEIT 15/1960, p. 3
  19. ↑ At a glance ... , DIE ZEIT 10/1958, March 6, 1958
  20. ↑ At bargain prices: Supertankers, built in abundance in the 1970s, are no longer in demand. In: Der Spiegel 46/1981, November 9, 1981.
  21. ↑ Absolutely hopeless , Der Spiegel 5/1983, January 31, 1983, pp. 120f., Online: [2]
  22. ↑ Harald Wixforth: From the 'leading sector' to the crisis industry. In: Deutsche Schiffahrt 2 (2019), pp. 2–4.
  23. ↑ Hans Böhme (June 1998): World sea traffic in the vortex of the Asian crisis, Kiel discussion papers 317/318 ( Kiel Institute for the World Economy ), PDF, 94 pp.
  24. ↑ Martin Stopford: The Great Shipping Boom 2003 - 2008 - Can We Avoid a Great Shipping Slump? (November 2008)
  25. ↑ www.pwc.de
  26. ↑ The Drama of the Ship Banks. - The banking world has been hit hard by the shipping crisis. Some shipping banks like Commerzbank withdrew, but the legacy remains.
  27. ↑ a b bundesbank.de: full text of the speech
  28. ↑ Handelsblatt: Bundesbank warns of consequences
  29. ↑ [3]
  30. ↑ FAZ April 22, 2013: Issuing houses struggle to survive
  31. ↑ a b Annual Report 2009 , p. 18 (PDF, approx. 7.8 MB)
  32. ↑ According to ihs.com, they offer "a detailed statistical analysis of shipbuilding activities , the composition of the global fleet and an overview of total losses and decommissioning"
  33. ↑ Annual report 2009 (pdf, 363 pages)
  34. ↑ HANSA: Thanks to the shipping crisis, the scrapping industry is flourishing ( Memento from July 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (Article published in June 2012 in HANSA magazine )
  35. ↑ The curb weight of the ship is called "LTD" in the industry (light ton displacement).
  36. ↑ UNCTAD 2010, p. 51. [4] (PDF; 11.8 MB)
  37. ↑ Annual report 2010 page 29  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.marine.de
  38. ↑ Federal government approves state guarantee (Federal Government and State of Hamburg guaranteed 90 percent bank loans of 1.2 billion euros.). www.verkehrrundschau.de
  39. ↑ Handelsblatt September 22, 2010: Hapag-Lloyd restructures mountain of debt
  40. ↑ taz.de February 6, 2009: From the Bremer Seefahrer-Traum. - The now closed shipping company "Senator Lines" is a child of Bremen's state economic policy: The city-state wanted to play a role again in container traffic around the world
  41. ^ Annual report of the German Navy 2011 , page 1
  42. ^ Annual report of the German Navy 2011 , page 4
  43. ^ Annual report of the German Navy 2011 , page 5
  44. ↑ Press release of March 12, 2012
  45. ↑ www.hapag-lloyd.de: Press release of March 13, 2013
  46. Jump up strategy: Commerzbank handles ship financing on spiegel.de, June 27, 2012.
  47. ^ Christian Müßgens, Johannes Ritter: Crisis in shipping hits investors with force. In: FAZ.net . July 18, 2012, accessed October 13, 2018 .
  48. ↑ NordLB Annual Report 2012 , p. 1
  49. ^ Interim report of NordLB as of September 30, 2012, page 9
  50. ↑ Handelsblatt: Bundesbank warns of consequences
  51. ↑ Annual Report 2013 , p. 2 ([PDF, 4 MB]); therein p. 24–27: Put your trust in the right ships
  52. ↑ HSH Nordbank and Navios develop new financing approach for ships threatened by insolvency ( Memento from August 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  53. ↑ www.navios.com (April 22, 2013): Navios Maritime Holdings Inc. and Navios Maritime Acquisition Corporation Through a New Joint Venture Agree to Acquire a Ten-Vessel Fleet From Debtors of HSH Nordbank AG. - Innovative Financing Solution; Strategic Partnership With HSH Nordbank AG; Entry Into Container Segment
  54. ↑ Manager Magazin June 7, 2013: Banks and investors are chasing off investors
  55. ↑ Ship funds make investors desperate on faz.net, October 31, 2013
  56. ↑ [5] Nord-LB interim report 3rd quarter 2013, p. 9 (pdf)
  57. ↑ Press release of the VDR ( Association of German Shipowners ) of July 3, 2014: Germany's maritime location is more at risk than ever
  58. ↑ Verkehrsrundschau, November 17, 2014
  59. ↑ Focus Online, November 25, 2014
  60. ^ The time of oil tankers , Handelsblatt, January 9, 2015
  61. ^ Gustav Adolf Theel: Bremer Jahrbuch der Weltschiffahrt 1952/53. Edited by the Senator for Foreign Trade. Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg 1953, p. 149.
  62. ↑ Olaf Preuß: Shipowner: 'The shipping crisis is coming to an end' . Hamburger Abendblatt February 25, 2015 [6] accessed on October 16, 2015
  63. ↑ Hamburg port statistics 2014
  64. ↑ onvista.de, August 17, 2015
  65. ↑ Birger Nicolai: Hapag-Lloyd has to put 23 ships on a leash. In: Die Welt , January 13, 2016 online
  66. ^ First signs of a turnaround in the global economy , in: Die Welt , December 23, 2015.
  67. ↑ Peter Hanuschke: The way into the shipping crisis . In: Weser Kurier, March 15, 2018.
  68. ↑ After the Hanjin bankruptcy, shipping is threatened with chaos . In: Die Welt , September 9, 2016.
  69. ^ Oetker sells Hamburg Süd , in: Handelsblatt , December 1, 2016.
  70. ↑ The shipping crisis causes a slump in profits , in: Handelsblatt , November 2, 2016.
  71. ↑ The bill is getting higher and higher. In: tagesschau.de, January 22, 2017.
  72. ↑ Annual Report 2016 , p. U2, p. 6, 8, 12, 14f. and 91.
  73. ↑ DVB Bank possibly with another loss . In: Handelsblatt, June 30, 2017.
  74. ↑ Most serious shipping company crisis for 145 years , In: Handelsblatt , January 2, 2017.
  75. ↑ Jörn Quitzau, Henning Vöpel, Malte Jahn a. a .: Shipping in times of digital change. Strategy 2030. HWWI / Beerenberg, Hamburg 2018.
  76. ↑ German merchant fleet continues to shrink to Lübecker Nachrichten Online, December 7, 2018.
  77. ↑ Data on de.statista.com , accessed on October 23, 2019.
  78. ↑ So far, these are the real winners in the trade dispute, on www.finanzen.ch, June 18, 2019.
  79. ↑ Shipping market report autumn 2019 at www.ernst-russ.de, accessed on October 23, 2019.
  80. ↑ Corona crisis reaches shipping: Less cargo expected. dpa report, Süddeutsche Zeitung, March 20, 2020.
  81. ↑ Handelsblatt newsblog, May 27, 2020.
  82. ↑ Axel Schönknecht: Maritime Containerlogistik , Berlin, Heidelberg 2009, p. 129 ff.
  83. ↑ Axel Schönknecht: Development of the size of container ships and the impact on the intermodal transport chain. In: Logistics Journal April 2007 (pdf)
  84. ↑ Quitzau, Vöpel, Jahn u. a. 2018, p. 28.
  85. ↑ http://www.vhss.de/index.php?id=28
  86. ^ Blue Point Trading website, February 4, 2015
  87. ↑ RWI / ISL container handling index increased in May ( Memento from March 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (ISL)