World’s Merchant Fleet In 2018 – Structure And Characteristics Of Fleet And Its Performance

This report provides a picture of the world’s merchant fleet in 2018, derived from data contained in the Equasis database. It examines the structure and characteristics of the fleet and its performance.

The statistics are grouped into themes that could be of interest to the industry and regulators.

The themes are as follows:

1. The Merchant Fleet Population
2. Classification Societies
3. P&I
4. Port State Control
5. Vetting Programmes and Trade Associations

Representation Image – Credits: eagle.org

OVERVIEW Equasis is populated with data from most of the world’s merchant ships. Basic ship particulars are derived from the commercial database of IHS Markit Maritime & Trade.

From a commercial and regulatory point of view, size and type of ship are two key criteria and therefore throughout this report the statistical analysis is based on these two elements. For the “port State control” theme, ships will be divided into ship type categories derived from PSC databases. For the first time this document contains information on internationally operating fishing vessels over 100GT with an IMO number. Therefore, it should be noted that direct comparisons with the figures from previous year should be used with caution as this has added over 25,000 ships to Equasis. These vessels now represent 21% of the ships in the database. Approximately one fifth of these vessels (5,224) are over 500GT and therefore are included, where appropriate, in the statistics after Section 1.

 Equasis Statistics -The World Fleet 2018.pdf

Reference: emsa.europa.eu

Source: Maritime Shipping News