There have been 101 newbuilding deliveries in Q1 consisting of 5 VLOC, 21 Capesize, 13 Post Panamax, 21 Panamax, 24 Supra-Ultra and 17 Handysize.

Demolition to date numbers 43 ships: 10 VLOC , 5 Capesize, 7 Panamax, 2 Supramax and 19 Handysize.

Ultra’s (60-66,000 DWT geared) dominate the Supra sector though here too we envisage less deliveries than the 138 that came out of yards in 2020. With the current strong freight markets and a relatively young average age it is unlikely many of the 3,400 vessels in this sector will be scrapped this year.

Deletions continue to outnumber deliveries in the Handysize sector.

So, though there are 86 vessels left on the orderbook for 2021 their impact on the overall fleet may well be limited.

We expect a busy Q2 for deliveries but then expect to see the orderbook start to tail off in the second half of the year so we forecast total tonnage Inflow in 2021 to be around 35 MDWT.

Demolition has started the year strongly by virtue of a number of VLOC’s being taken out of service but with present strong freight markets we envisage the pace of scrapping to slow such that it may only total 11 MDWT by the end of the year.

A significantly reduced orderbook will mean overall net fleet growth at 2.8% to be well below the 3.9% in 2019 and 3.6% in 2020.