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[Phil English]

With the sudden crash in the shipping markets there is now evidence of a wave of ships being formally laid up in ports around the U.K. and on the continent. So far, we have:

Southampton - ATLANTIC BRIDGE and MARGARET HILL
Tees - CALA PORTOFINO and CALA POSITANO (due shortly)
River Fal - SETUBAL (to be confirmed, but would appear to be laid up)
Tilbury  - EMARAUDE FRANCE, SPEEDONE, EGLANTINE, IPSWICH WAY and OSTEND WAY. (the last 3 to be confirmed, but they have not moved since mid-November)

Plus there is a gaggle of container feeders at Hamburg, thanks to photos posted by one of our correspondents there.

There are also reports that Zodiac are laying up a container ship at Southampton, but they are not disclosing which one. There is nothing on AIS to suggest that anything has arrived yet, but can any of our local correspondents in the Solent area confirm?

Any further news of ships arriving for lay up, please post in this thread. Thanks.

[Ferry-Man]

HD1 Laid up in Newhaven

[Allan RO]

Hi Phil

Not sure about Margaret Hill strictly being laid up - I thought she was awaiting conversion to a floating LPG production/storage facility.  Interestingly, Atlantic Bridge sailed for Brazil after just a week at 101 berth.  Morning Cloud is on the list as being at Southampton until 04:2009, but no doubt if there is a sudden surge in demand for bulkers, she'll be off sooner..

The lay-up of the Costa Container vessels must be very worrying for the builders.  Stocznia Szczecińska Nowa have orders in hand for two updated versions, B170/V and also two B178/III vessels for the same company.  Bear in mind it was the cancellation of the delivery of two B591 vessels, one almost complete, from another Italian company, Lloyd Sardegna in 2002, that was instrumental in the bankruptcy of Stocznia Szczecińska in that year.   I hope Italian lightning does not strike twice at the same yard.

Allan

[Ferry-Man]

I'm pretty sure the Pride of Telemark is still laid up following her accident last year. All repairs I think are finished, but she never got back into service with Kystlink, who, of course, have since gone bankrupt. :-(

[Phil English]

Allan,

Thanks for the info about the ATLANTIC BRIDGE. I hadn't realised she'd gone. As for the MARGARET HILL, yes, there is a potential plan for her to be converted, but that's still in the pipeline. In the meantime, she has struggled to find work in the spot market and has spent most of this year idle. Effectively, she is laid up.

I don't see the connection between the yard and the laying up of the two containerships. Ships are lying idle because of the current economic slump and where they are built has no bearing on this. However, Szczecin Nowa, the restructured Szczecin Shipyard, is already in dire financial difficulties and has been for some time. Along with the other main Polish yard at Gdynia, they have to pay back millions of Euros in illigal state aid. The assest of the yards will be sold off, or alternatively they face bankrupcly, but whatever happens shipbuilding is likely to end. As it is, they are struggling to complete orders which are running 1-2 years behind schedule, the owners having walked away in most instances.

[Phil English]

Thanks Ferryman for your help on this.

Phil

[Allan RO]

Hi Phil

My point about the yard is that if CCL are laying up existing vessels, they are not likely to want new ones of the same type delivered.

Regarding the EU attitude to shipbuilding, it is quite likely that their rules regarding subsidies will kill off shipbuilding completely in both Poland and Croatia, as it prepares for EU membership.  Is that what the EU want ??   A huge rise in unemployment, and crumbling economies that will still have to be subsidised in some form by UK, Germany and France !!!

The EU has never stopped the French subsidising their inefficient airline Air France, (or their railways for that matter) or various farmers around Europe who seem to benefit from the ludicrous CAP - just what do the mandarins of the EU have against shipbuilding?

Allan

[Phil English]

Allan,

You may well be right, but because of SSN's woes, the vessels CCL has on order there will probably not be built anyway, irrespective of how well or badly the shipping markets perform. In fact CCL may be on to a good thing. They will not get the ships, but because it is SSN defaulting and not CCLs choice to cancel, they will get compensated for any downpayments made.

As for the EU, they probably realise (if they have any sense) that EU shipbuilders are unable to compete with the efficiency and productivity of Korean, Japanese and, to a lesser extent, Chinese yards, so throwing public money at a failing industry is not wise. Even with massive subsidies, Polish yards were struggling to complete orders on time.

[Bob Scott]

Phil:
At two years behind schedule, Polish shipyards would seem to have improved their performance in the 20-odd years since I last visited them.
At that time, they had about a five-year lead-time but their big sales gimmick for attracting orders from the West was the guarantee to shipowners that if they ordered a ship in 1984, they'd take delivery of it in about 1989 or 1990, but at 1984 prices. It was a case of "anything to get hard currency". In fact, so bad was Poland's hard-currency situation in the 1980s that shipowners were having to purchase western-made equipment themselves from the manufacturers and have it sent to Poland for installation in their newbuildings.
The most prominent victims of this problem at the time of my 1984 visit were the four B494 "Super Night Ferries" for Stena Line. They had been ordered in 1979, two each from the Paris Commune yard in Gdynia and the Lenin yard in Gdansk. Only two (Stena Germanica and Stena Scandinavica) were actually delivered to Stena - in 1987 and 1988. The others (which were to have been Stena Polonica and Stena Baltica) were sold off before completion an were laid up in the Polish yards until at least 1989, before being towed away for completion in Greece. One of them  - B494/04, now named Regent Sky - is still in an incomplete state in Greece, nearly 30 years after it was first ordered.

[Allan RO]

Hi Phil

That's as may be, but surely it is a government's responsibility to look after its workforce.   The closure of the yards in Poland and Croatia would cause a huge increase in unemployment (which is high anyway) - and who will have to pay for these unfortunates to survive.  Surely it is better to keep a workforce meaningfully employed by means of industry subsidies than to lay them off and and have to pay them benefits.

As for the EU realising it can not compete with Korea and China, what do we in Europe do - simply stop manufacturing anything and hand world production to the Far East.   Looking at the recent woes of the banking industry we don't even seem to be able to run 'service' industries.

Allan

[Phil English]

Absoluetely right Bob. Polish yards have never performed well, at least in recent times. They also struggled with orders for sophisticated open-hatch bulkers placed by Gearbulk and Westwood at Gdansk and Gdynia respectively. Both sets of orders suffered long delays and only some of the Gearbulk ships were ever built. Westwood took delivery of 4 out of  8 ships ordered in 2000, but walked away from the others. Gdynia still optimistically include the final ships in their orderbook with delivery in 2011 !!

[Phil English]

Allan,

That's a fair point, but if ship owners won't order ships in Europe, what can you do? Established yards in the Far East are proven to be efficient, productive and ship owners are getting good value for money. Many ship owners simply refuse to take the risk and order anywhere else. Sure, there are areas where European yards do have the edge over their Far-Eastern counterparts, notably in the building of cruise ships and ferries. Unfortunately, I can't see the European shipbuilding industry doing anything other than falling further and further behind their rivals, especially as Far Eastern yards are sitting on huge orderbooks stretching 4-5 years ahead and in no rush to take on new contracts in the current uncertain climate. On the other hand, European yards, who managed to take advantage of the shipbuilding boom and snatch orders away from the far east by offering earlier delivery slots are now nervously looking ahead.

[Edward Nightingale]

The car carrier Palma sailed from Portbury early on 28/11 to lay up in Falmouth (joining the Setubal)

[DanSTN]

The 149,513dwt Bulk Carrier Waterford is due alongside 101 berth in Southampton tomorrow. I would assume this will be a short lay-up as there are still a couple cruise ships scheduled to use the berth before christmas.

This will mean there are two Zodiac managed bulk carriers laid up at Southampton.

[Bob Scott]

A week is a long time in politics, they say. And so it is, too, in shipping.
This time a fortnight ago I would have been prophesying that we could be seeing a huge number of (especially older) containerships being put into lay-up, not just because of the down-turn in just-about every type of shipping you can think of but also because the bottom had fallen out of the scrap-steel market.
Unwanted and ‘unscrappable’ box-ships, I thought, would soon be tied-up several-abreast on buoys all over the world, waiting to see what picked-up first: the container trades or the price of scrap.
Now I read that scrap prices have started to rally (a little) while freight rates continue to nose-dive.
So I would advise that you ship photographers who have not yet managed add to your collection pics of museum-piece containerships like MSC’s nearly-30-years-old Stefania, Giulia, Mee May and Anastasia try to get one soon!
If scrap prices continue to improve, these and many more old-timers, I suspect, will be by-passing the indignity of lay-up and proceeding straight to the beaches at Alang and Gadani.

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