The year 2024 has been a landmark year for Asian shipbuilders, with the average cost of new construction hitting new highs.
According to the latest data from British shipbuilding and shipping market analyst agency Clarkson, the average price of a new ship in 2024 reached $90 million, which is 30% higher than the highest average cost set in 2022, and much higher than the average level of nearly US$50 million in the past 10 years.
Clarksons believes that the increasing popularity of green technology, high value-added product portfolios, and shipowners placing orders for large ships are factors that lead to higher prices for new ships. For example, the average tonnage of new ship ordered in 2024 is 54,000 tons, a record high, 40% higher than the 10-year average. Among them, higher-cost ships such as LNG carriers, container ships and cruise ships account for nearly 50% of the tonnage of new ship orders in 2024, compared with an average level of only 28% in the 2010s.
So far this year, shipbuilders have seen strong growth in new shipbuilding orders in most sectors, with new ship order tonnage in the first nine months (93.6 million tons) already exceeding the total tonnage for the full years of 2022 and 2023.
Clarkson predicts that the full-year new ship order tonnage in 2024 will exceed 100 million tons. Although this is a high level, it is still far from the record new ship order scale of 172 million tons in 2007.