Photo: CFP

Chinese shipbuilders has won all 17 new orders for pure car and truck carrier (PCTC) worldwide in January, as domestic enterprises break Japanese and South Korean monopoly of PCTC construction thanks to the nation's booming car exports. 

According to data from UK-based Clarkson Research, the 17 new orders totaled a combined 510,000 deadweight tons with 152,000 parking spots. 

Analysts noted that China's booming exports in new-energy vehicles (NEVs) has boosted market demand for PCTC, as domestic shipbuilders have been continuously growing global market share in the sector. 

China's rapid development and expansion in NEVs along with the upgrading and transforming of leading giants has further driven the transportation demand and capacity, Zheng Ping, chief analyst of industry news chineseport.cn, told the Global Times on Saturday.

Zheng noted that the transportation for vehicles used to be mainly taken by traditional shipping companies as the import demand was greater than China's export needs. 

However, Zheng has witnessed an explosive growth for the PCTC market as Chinese carmakers have been catching up and leading in the global NEVs sector with a surging market demand from overseas, expecting a rapid development for the PCTC market in the next three to five years. 

China exported 3.11 million vehicles in 2022, up 54.4 percent compared with 2021, while the export of NEVs recorded a year-on-year increase of 1.2 times to 679,000, data from China Association of Automobile Manufactures showed. 

Amid growing exports, Chinese car manufactures such as BYD and SAIC have also started making strategic moves in vehicle transportation. 

The car carriers now should establish a larger deck to transport more vehicles as NEVs are relatively heavier due to their batteries on top of more enlarged passenger cars models, Zhang Zhuo, a leading expert from Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute said, according to a China Media Group report. 

Zheng added that domestic car enterprises can control logistics cost from the perspective of supply chain while ensuring transportation efficiency by involving into the vessel construction process. 

State-owned giant China State Shipbuilding Corp (CSSC) claimed nearly 50 percent of all PCTC orders in January, the Shanghai Securities News reported. Since 2021, CSSC has received orders for 35 PCTC vessels with car-carrying capacities of 7,000 to 9,200, with a global market share of 27 percent.