Today, most ship repairs are carried out in the UK, Singapore, Dubai, Bahrain or Colombo. Singapore is the numero uno ship repair centre in the world, having a share of about 20% of the total industry. The global ship repair bill is estimated to be of the order of $10-12 billion and is expected to grow significantly in the next decade, driven by pollution control measures and stricter environmental norms and regulations. This includes conversion of single-hull vessels to double-hull.

However, in the current scenario, shipping lines have been experiencing a major demand slump and freight rates have come down to almost 1/10th of their earlier levels. The Baltic dry index, which determines the freight rates, has fallen down from a high of more than 11,500 to 850 in less than six months (a fall of 93%).

Coupled with this, the liquidity crunch has proved to be detrimental for the ship building yards. About 50% of the $500 billion new ship building orders is yet to tie-up their finances and the lending institutions have been apprehensive in extending support to these. This has resulted in cancellation of order books globally and shipping lines have been staying away from new buildings as their ships have started idling. Across the world there could be a pressure to increase the scrapping age of the vessels, and this can lead to an upturn in the ship repair field.