Baltic Exchange Dry Index (BDI) divided by S&P 500 (Ratio)
Shipping is not likely to pick up for a while. No need for new ships. The BDI is falling faster than the S&P 500 and it is even more of a leading indicator than the S&P 500.
Posted on 01/11/2016 6:41:31 PM PST by Zhang Fei
Shipyards in China will continue to lag behind their foreign rivals as cumbersome financing conditions and prolonged excess capacity continue to crimp industry profits and push smaller shipyards out, experts said.
Zhoushan Intermediate People’s Court announced last week that it had accepted an application from Zhejiang Shipping Group Co to liquidate its subsidiary Wuzhou Shipbuilding and Maintenance Co, making it the first State-owned shipyard to go bankrupt since 2005.
Rough seas ahead for struggling shipyards in China Zhejiang Shipping said that the shipyard’s bankruptcy was due to its massive debt burden of 911 million yuan ($140 million), including payment in arrears to workers, parts suppliers and taxation authorities.
Wuzhou Shipyard suspended operations after it delivered a 2,500 twenty-foot equivalent units container ship to Shanghai Zhonggu Xinliang Shipping Co in July. It also has one 2,500 TEU container ship, two barges and one tugboat which remain undelivered.
(Excerpt) Read more at hellenicshippingnews.com ...
Seems like they could double the size of their navy pretty quickly, yes?
Anyone who follows the Baltic Dry Index as a macro-economic indicator is not surprised and knows this is the fate of ships and shipyards across the globe.
Most Chinese shipyards specialize in low-end work - bulk carriers. Building a navy is more specialized work. Most civilian shipping doesn't require armor-plated decks or hulls, let alone modular designs that allow room for future weapon systems.
The modern ships they have been building are gigantic. They don’t need many of those to replace a fleet of older ships.
$140 million is not massive debt.
Jeff Head would be a good person to ask about this.
I don't disagree that they can build these ships. But the main reason is the massive Chinese defense budget (probably around $200b), not the existence of these yards.
Babur to man them with blue water sailors that can launch 40 planes in the dark of night and recover them ha ha ha
With enough cash and a bit of time, they can get past these problems. It's not as if it took decades for USN carriers to begin night operations, which were initiated in 1944. It all comes down to money, and the PLAN has been getting wads of it. The question isn't whether our guys will have to deal with Chinese carrier groups - it's how many.
Shipping Said to Have Ceased… Is the Worldwide Economy Grinding to a Halt?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqoFjvnVnlw
“Shipping Said to Have Ceased… Is the Worldwide Economy Grinding to a Halt?”
I think the big factor here is a drastic decline in Chinese capital spending (too many empty office and residential buildings, too much industrial capacity, the idled shipyards being a case in point). China will continue exporting goods to the world, to the extent that skyrocketing Chinese wages offset by a falling yuan are able to remain competitive with world labor rates. But the multi-decade commodities boom has now turned to bust - a big chunk of the extraction capacity readied for unending growth in commodity exports will now have to sit idle because it is unprofitable at current prices even if you write off the entire cost of exploration and setting up the mine.
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