South Korean shipyards kept up edge in the international race to win new orders in May as well as for the first five months of the year.

According to British shipbuilding and marine industry tracker Clarkson Research Services on Tuesday, Korean shipbuilders bagged combined 15 orders in 550,000 compensated gross tonnage (CGT) in May, snatching up more than half of the total 35 shipbuilding orders in 1 million CGT placed in the world last month.

China won the second-largest volume of 250,000 CGT or 13 orders in May, followed by Germany with 90,000 CGT. Japan received none.

Although similar in vessel order, Korean players overwhelmed Chinese rivals in terms of CGT, which reflects relative output of a shipyard’s activities such as the amount of work put into building a ship and price premium.

Based on the accumulated new order volume between January and May this year, Korea topped with 4.1 million CGT. China came second with 3.59 million and Japan third with 1.13 CGT.

In May, the world’s new order volume stood at 1 million CGT, only two-thirds of 1.48 million CGT order placed in the previous month. But the accumulated new order volume for January-May period has grown steadily in recent three years - 6.08 million CGT in 2016, 8.64 million CGT in 2017, and 10 million CGT in 2018.

As of the end of May, global ship order backlog amounted to 75.32 million CGT, 1.68 million CGT less compared to the previous month. By country, China holds the largest backlog of 28.22 million CGT, trailed by Korea and Japan with 16.96 million CGT and 14.54 million CGT, respectively.

By Woo Je-yoon and Cho Jeehyun

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