The car carrier sector - one of the shipping sectors most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic - continues to recover globally from the pandemic-related slump just over a year ago, and has far surpassed pre-pandemic levels by mid-2021. In doing so, charter rates have risen drastically. The one-year time charter rate for a 6,500-CEU carrier rose to $24,000 per day in June 2021 (up from an average of $12,000 per day in 2020).
Moreover, the number of laid-up ("idle") vessels has shrunk and returned to pre-pandemic levels. By mid-2021, it was estimated that only 3% of the capacity of the car carrier fleet was "idle," down from 18% a year earlier.
Compared to the disastrous throughput results in the first half of 2020, the volumes of the observed car transshipment ports are once again approaching figures from before the COVID-19 pandemic, yet continue to fall short of results from the first half of 2019. For example, although Bremerhaven handled more than 470,000 cars in the second quarter of 2021, almost doubling its 2020 results, this is still almost 70,000 units less than in the second quarter of 2019.
The impact of COVID-19 on the automotive industry was devastating. Global production of cars declined significantly. If the production of passenger cars in 2019 was still about 92.2 million units, in 2020 it declined by almost 16% to only 77.6 million passenger cars.
The analysis of the latest statistics with production figures for the 1st quarter of 2021 also shows that only China, India and South Korea have come close to or exceeded pre-COVID levels.
According to new estimates and forecasts by Clarkson Research, the global seaborne trade of cars developed in line with production and declined by 21.2% year-on-year down to 20.6 million vehicles in 2020. This is more or less the level at the start of the last decade.
Latest monthly figures support the vehicle production figures for the first half of 2021. Following the devastating crash in transport volumes mid of last year, there has also been a noticeable easing at the level of seaborne imports and exports, although here too the record levels from the second half of the last decade have not yet been reached again.
https://www.isl.org/index.php/en/news/car-carrier-market-turnaround-many-lean-years
2021/8/23 15:32:29