Private debt market data highlights the sliding fortunes of various shipping sectors

Oceanis, a German online ship finance platform, has released data highlighting the changing fortunes of the various shipping sectors, numbers that make for good reading for those involved in the offshore support vessel (OSV) sector and less so for anyone involved in container shipping. 

Over the last three years oceanis has been tracking published shipping finance projects across all segments and regions in the private debt markets arranged by intermediaries. On the below chart Splash readers can see how the distribution of shipping finance projects has developed from 2022 to 2023.

Offshore shipping finance projects represent 25% of the concluded financings this year, a significant increase compared to 3% last year. There is also a clear trend of subdued appetite for container vessel financings, with boxships representing 24% of concluded projects in 2022, now down to 8% in 2023.

“With OSV markets continuing to firm up, we believe financing for offshore vessels will follow as we expect the oil and gas companies to offer longer term employment to secure their need for tonnage as rates continue to increase,” oceanis noted in a recent report, the latest in a series of bullish market reports about the recovering OSV scene, where most laid up tonnage has been reactivated in recent months as highlighted by VesselsValue in the chart at the bottom of this article. 

On the overall ship finance mood, oceanis observed: “Banks, Debt Funds and Lessors have showered shipowners with relatively inexpensive capital over the past 24 months. Meanwhile, equity investors are rare both in public and private markets.”

Commenting on the numbers, Dagfinn Lunde, Splash’s ship finance columnist and chairman of eShipfinance.com, said the offshore sector was in catch-up mode after years of inactivity. Lunde said of the drop in container financing it was no surprise as the previous extreme values made even a 40% financing risky today.