Repair yard activity during the pandemic

Repair activity during the pandemic

Marine Benchmark’s data shows thet initial concerns that the Covid-19 pandemic would radically slow repair yard activity have, generally, proved unfounded. In fact, overall, 2020 global yard usage was 5% stronger than 2019 at nearly 22 million hours and the highest on record. It is also true that this growth dissipated through 2020, partly because of the pandemic, and even turned negative in December. Last year’s yard usage growth compares with a net 1.6% increase in the global IMO registered fleet and a 4.3% increase in net deadweight tonnage – reflecting the economies-of-scale movement towards larger vessels.

However, these global statistics obscure regional variations and, more importantly, changes in the profile of vessel yard visits as the world responded to the pandemic. As the following chart shows, repair yard activity in Africa and South America declined in 2020 relative to 2019. In Africa, this decline was dominated by a multi-year decline in Ivory Coast activity that isn’t Covid-19 related while in South America the declines were across the board.

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