Singapore: Despite the slew of OSVs on order there’s a very bright future for earnings in this sector, says one of the leading brokers in this field. Mike Meade, boss of brokers M3 Marine, told SeaShip News that the outlook for the sector through to 2017 is “positive growth”. In Asia Pacific alone the demand increase through to 2017 will necessitate the need for another 200 OSVs.
“In our business ships are cheaper than they have been for more than five years. You can order ships at breakeven prices for the yards,” Meade said.
For OSVs when utilization rates hit 80% freight rates normally increase, and Meade reports that utilization is already “north of 80%”.
Malaysia is especially “hot” at the moment, Meade said with his firm fixing seven ships there in the past month.
The only risk on the horizon, according to Meade, is “people overextending themselves”. Bonds are getting expensive and are unsecured and there have been a lot of them issued by OSV operators of late. [20/09/12]
