China’s shipbuilding sector has been more resilient than last year but new received orders and orders-in-hand are still falling dramatically. Steel demand from the sector appeared strong in July despite a month-on-month decline, with completions up year-on-year, Kallanish notes.

China has now completed 29.78 million deadweight tonnes of ship in the first seven months of the year, up 55.1% from the same period of 2016, according to the China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry (CANSI). Completions in July surged 58.1% year-on-year to 3.24m dwt, although this was largely due to a fall in completions in July 2016. That leaves implied steel demand year-to-date at about 10.3 million tonnes, compared to 6.64mt by this time last year, Kallanish estimates.

New shipbuilding orders however actually decreased -25.1% y-o-y to 13.24m dwt. As a result, order books at the end of July were down -31.5% y-o-y and by -19.4% from the end of 2016 at 80.28m dwt.