Ranked: The Countries That Dominate Global Shipbuilding

Pallavi Rao
2024-10-17 02:19:00
www.visualcapitalist.com

Breaking Down the Global Shipbuilding Industry, by Country

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This chart breaks down the major players in shipbuilding, by the gross tonnage (GT) of merchant ships built in 2023.

Gross Tonnage (GT) measures the internal volume of a ship and is not related to the ship’s weight, but rather its overall size and capacity.

A very large container ship with a capacity of around 20,250 TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units) would have 220,000 GT.

Data for this chart is sourced from UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and excludes military vessels, yachts, fishing vessels, offshore platforms, and barges. Figures are rounded.

Asia Builds the World’s Ships

China built more than half of all the world’s merchant ships by gross tonnage (33 million GT) in 2023. This translates into 150 of the world’s largest container ships.

We list the top 15 shipbuilding countries here, most of them are combined into one “rest-of-world” category in the graphic since their share is so small.

Rank	Country	Gross Tonnage (2023)	Share of Total
1	China	32,859,862	51%
2	South Korea	18,317,886	28%
3	Japan	9,965,182	15%
4	Philippines	805,938	1%
5	Italy	402,164	0.62%
6	France	326,680	0.50%
7	Germany	289,666	0.45%
8	Finland	261,654	0.40%
9	Taiwan	187,558	0.29%
10	Russia	177,571	0.27%
11	Netherlands	90,596	0.14%
12	Türkiye	79,032	0.12%
13	Indonesia	75,979	0.12%
14	U.S.	64,809	0.10%
15	Iran	64,760	0.09%
N/A	World	64,774,769	N/A

South Korea (18 million GT) and Japan (10 million GT) are also major players in the shipbuilding industry. Put together these three countries account for 95% of the entire industry.

China’s domination is particularly mind-boggling. It’s been the leading shipbuilder for 14 straight years. In fact, in 2007 it was behind both Japan and South Korea; by 2010 it had leapfrogged both countries.

The sector’s growth—and general economic growth in the country—coincided with China’s ascension to the WTO in 2001. Chinese manufacturing in multiple sectors exploded and its exports skyrocketed, helping it become the world’s second-largest economy in 2010.

China’s shipbuilding prowess hit a wobble in 2008, when the recession forced hundreds of yard closures. Since then, however, shipyards have changed focus: not so much on bulk carriers but to “high value ships” like cruise ships and LNG carriers.

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Need more data to understand the Chinese economy? Check out The Rapid Decline of China’s Private Sector to see how and why venture capital is drying up in the country.

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