Tight supply of large anchor handlers elevates rates, as charterers look to long-term deals to secure tonnage amid little prospects for newbuilding in southeast Asia
Day rates and total working vessel utilisation levels are roaring back in southeast Asia in early 2025, thanks to the tightening OSV supply, according to a respected shipbroker.
Day rates for ’backbone’ 5,150-bhp anchor handling tug supply (AHTS) vessels have hit US$8,100, said M3 Marine Group chief executive Mike Meade. Additionally, he noted rates for larger 8,000-bhp vessels have recovered to US$12,000, after softening due to the monsoon season in Q4 2024. He noted a shortage of 8,000-bhp AHTSs in southeast Asia market.
“We are seeing charters move from spot to long term” for these classes of vessel, he said.
Speaking to about 500 delegates at the Annual Offshore Support Journal Conference, Awards and Exhibition, held in London in February, Mr Meade provided an upbeat assessment for the region’s OSV market in a rapid-fire overview of the offshore oil and gas, subsea and renewables sectors.
He noted the most powerful AHTS units, ranging from 10,000 to 12,000 bhp, in Asia Pacific (APAC) are being chartered at rates of US$16,000-US$19,000 per day.
He said “a few units have come back” to the region from China, where they were repositioned during the downturn to serve the Chinese windfarm market. These 10,000- 12,000-bhp vessels have now returned after “wind subsidies have gone in China.” Many of these OSVs, however, have had their dynamic positioning systems decommissioned.
With a fleet of about 550 vessels in the APAC, AHTSs still dominate the region, he observed. Only about 150 platform supply vessels (PSVs) are working in the market.
PSVs, with clear deck areas of 1,000 m2, command rates of between US$33,000 to US$36,000, which “is pretty consistent with the rest of the global market outside of the North Sea,” he said.
An “unhealthy” level of capacity in Q4 2024 was cured by a repositioning of many of those vessels to the Middle East and Africa. “We’ve seen a hardening in the rates since then, and we have very high utilisation in Asia.”
Mr Meade cautioned his data did not include Australia, where the rates are higher but so is the opex.
The odds of existing or new PSV capacity flooding the market also appear to be dim. “We have about 72 units laid up in southeast Asia, mostly in Batam. 75% of those are greater than 15 years old, and I can attest that those vessels will never go back to work,” said Mr Meade.
As far as newbuilds, Mr Meade indicated the distressed newbuilds that were left sitting at Chinese shipyards during the downturn have nearly all dried up and the current small orderbook was “a lot of hype.”
“Until the economics are right,” he said, large scale newbuilding is “not going to happen.”
