Greek Shipping-leads Number One!
In the Universal Shipping Trade, Greece leads number one position in spite of the various national and market encounters facing the Hellenic ship owning community. Greece has also sustained to reinforce its location as the major ship owning nation in current years.
The shipping community instigates to meet for another Posidonia, the Greek owners as of today control about 18% of the world fleet. Last year, Greek owners were the number one buyers, followed by China. The Greek owners also lead as number one sellers followed by Japan and Germany in the global sale and purchase market.
Greek owners continued to lead the alliance board of ship owning nations with a global market share of 16%, followed by Japan (13%), China (11%) and Germany (7%). In the latest years the status has been combined, with the Greek fleet growth by over 7% in 2015 – and this is the maximum noteworthy growth among all of major ship owning nations. The collective growth since 2009 is even extra significant; in terms of tonnage by 70%. In the recent years, Germany is the big loser of market share, in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis the violent growth of China has slowed. Athens/Piraeus also figures as the largest ship owning cluster globally, with Tokyo, Hamburg, Singapore and Hong Kong/Shenzhen making up the top five.
Punching Above Their Weight!
As the bulk shipping system changed in the second-half of the twentieth century, the Greek owners continued as the classic “cross traders” by increasing their market leading position. Currently, the share of Greek owners’ in the world fleet is 16% compared to a seaborne trade share for Greece, less than 1%. On contrast, the Chinese owner’s share is 11% of the world fleet comparative to the Chinese economy to seaborne trade by 16%.
Sticking With Wet And Dry
While a number of Greek owners have expanded into other shipping sectors, Greek owners have generally engaged a focus on the “wet” and “dry” sectors. Currently, the Greek fleet is largely made up of bulk carriers and tankers and with this combined segment mounting around 85% for most of the past twenty years. There has been some development of the Greek owned containership fleet and gas carriers but this is still generally inadequate. By contrast, Norwegian owners have trended in the direction of more specialised vessels (e.g. offshore, car carriers) and the German fleet has remained liner intensive.
Asset Players
Greek owners have also retained their role as shipping’s leading asset players and today operate a fleet with a value of some $91 billion (actually third in the rankings behind the US due to the value weighting of the cruise fleet). Greeks have not been quite so dominant in the new build market recently and in 2015, Greek owners trailed Japan and China in the investment rankings.
In spite of encountering many tasks, Greek fleet owners continue to “punch above their weight” as the world’s leading ship owners for yet another year!
Source: Clarksons
