A CHALLENGE TO ALL THE profitable. The trend in world shipping is towards larger ships which can take advantage of the economies of scale. Over the past 20 years tanker design for instance has undergone tremendous changes that illustrate this trend. In 1949 a tanker of 18,000 tons deadweight was considered a big ship, but the pace of development has been such that many ships built in the early 1960s are now considered obsolescent and uneconomic. It has been reported that one company's change in the size of ships is as follows. In 1957 ships of up to 25,000 tons deadweight represented over 70% of their fleet whereas in 1970 they were only 11% and the number below 15,000 tons was an insignificant proportion. It is clear therefore that UCS are building for a declining category of world shipping.
Recent years have witnessed an hitherto unpreceden ted increase in the size of certain merchant vessels. For example oil tankers of 326,000 tons deadweight have been built and tankers of even greater size are projected. The increase in size is not confined to oil carrying vessels. Ore carriers, container ships and cargo liners also show a similar marked tendency towards increased size, while demand for the passenger liner, a one-time speciality of the John Brown yard in particular, has virtually dried up due to competition from the airlines. Building costs for all vessels decrease up to a size of about 200,000 tons. For those over this weight they may increase in the first instance because of the need for new capital equipment to handle the huge prefabricated hull sections, higher quality steel, etc. But such increases will tend to diminish with time and experience.
THE GENERAL DECLINE AND THE BOURGEOIS PRESS As well as swimming against the tide in this respect, UCS is, like the entire world shipbuilding industry to a greater or lesser extent, faced with the problem of a spectacular decline in the demand for new tonnage. The shipowners have been hit by a dramatic decline in freight rates, which has reduced their willingness to buy. Indeed this has reached such proportions that in a recent edition of the Scottish