Containership newbuilding orders are forecast to exceed 500,000 teu this year after coming to a near standstill in 2009, with the pace of contracting picking up further in 2011.

Evergreen broke the orders drought last month with a series of 10 ships with declared capacity of 8,000 teu to be built at Samsung Heavy Industries. Neptune Orient Lines followed with a $1.2bn deal for both 8,400 teu and 10,700 teu ships. Those orders bring the year-to-date figure to around 200,000 teu.

With more owners known to be considering newbuilding projects, Maersk Broker predicted this week that the final figure for 2010 could be more than 500,000 teu, with the forecast for 2011 adjusted to 1.5m teu.

That would still be less than half the amount of containership capacity ordered in 2007, when contracts for more than 3.2m teu of newbuildings were placed. That amount included nearly 200 ships with capacity in excess of 8,000 teu.

Ordering dropped to around 1.1m teu in 2008 as the industry slowdown took hold. By that time, the orderbook had soared to around 60% of existing fleet capacity, driven by orders for ships bigger than anything ever built before.

The delivery profile has now been stretched out to at least 2014 for a handful of ships, although 2011 remains the peak year for deliveries, with an estimated 1.3m teu of new capacity scheduled to enter service. That will be followed by another 1.2m teu in 2012.

According to Maersk Broker, almost 850,000 teu was delivered in the first seven months of 2010, reducing the orderbook to 26.7% of fleet capacity.

Nominal capacity due to be completed in the final five months of 2010 is estimated at just under 690,000 teu, although some of these ships could be delayed until 2011.

Clarkson Securities estimates that around 40% of capacity due for delivery in the first half of 2010 had not hit the water by the end of June.

But the rate of slippage is slowing on a month-by-month basis as the freight markets recover, the firm notes in its latest Container Intelligence Quarterly.

The London-based broker estimates that 1.4m of additional containership capacity will be delivered this year, but demolition activity is helping to keep fleet growth under control. So far this year, 60 ships of 105,000 teu have been sold for scrap.

That compares with 197 vessels of 374,000 teu that were sent to the breakers in 2009. Prior to that, boxship demolition activity had been relatively light, with only 21 vessels sold for scrap in 2007.