Greek ship owners have more than doubled their newbuilding orders during the first half of 2017. According to exclusive data provided to Hellenic Shipping News (www.hellenicshippingnews.com), from ship valuations’ specialist VesselsValue, ship owners from Greece have so far placed orders for 58 ships, versus 28 in the same period of 2016 and 72 in 2015. As such, Greek owners have returned atop of the global newbuilding activity and by some margin, given that the next highest ordering nation was China with 40 orders. Japanese owners ordered just 13 ships, versus 105 ships over the first half of 2015 and 36 ships in 2016.

Globally, newbuilding orders amounted to 245 ships over the first half of 2017, a slight decrease versus the same period of last year, when a total of 254 units were ordered. However, these number pale in front of the 2015 ordering activity, when 594 newbuildings were contracted during the first six months of that year.

Orders By Companies

Lou Kollakis’ Chartworld Shipping has been the most aggressive in terms of its newbuilding ordering activity, having contracted a total of 14 ships so far. However, it’s worth noting that the company was absent from such activity during the past couple of years. The Angelikoussis-controlled Maran Tankers has also been very active with three newbuilding oredrs this year, on top of an additional six in 2015 and 4 in 2016 (13 in total). TMS Tankers has ordered four more vessels this year, while Enesel has invested in four newbuildings this year.

Orders by Ship Types

What’s also striking is that all of the 58 newbuilding orders this year have been for the mainstream ship types, i.e. tankers (42 orders) and dry bulk carriers (16). It’s worth adding that out of the 151 orders that Greek shipping companies have placed over the course of the past three years (first halves), 104 are for tankers, i.e. two thirds are for the wet segment. By contrast, the once favored and less capital intensive dry bulk segment attracted orders of just 29 ships over the same three-year period.