The overall volume of orders received by South Korean companies amounted to 500 thousand gross tonnage or CGT offsets for twelve vessels in July, accounting for 74% of the total global order size.

Chinese shipbuilders came in second, winning new orders for eight ships coming to 144 thousand CGT, led by Japanese shipyards with one ship to 30 thousand CGT.

It marks the first time that Korean shipbuilders have taken the top spot in the monthly global order book this year.

Last month's stellar success was largely attributed to the LNG ship order received by Hyundai Heavy Industries.

Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, a Hyundai Heavy unit, has signed an agreement to build four LNG carriers for ship owners in Europe and Bermuda, along with two additional petrochemicals and cruise ships.

In the first 7 months of the year, Chinese companies still led with cumulative orders of 3.7 million CGT, accounting for almost 60 percent of total global orders.

Korean and Japanese shipbuilders followed, respectively, by 25 and 10 per cent.

Clarkson announced that total orders for the first seven months of 2020 were just 40% of last year's figure for the same period.

It is the shipbuilding sector's worst result in a decade.

Maritime Business World