Official Statistics

Shipping fleet statistics: 2018

Statistics on the size of the UK and world shipping fleets on 31 December 2018.

Documents

Shipping fleet statistics: 2018 tables

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Details

Gross tonnage on the UK Ship Register was 16.0 million at end of December 2018, a decrease of 1% on the previous year, but 16% up on the figure at end 2014.

Based on commercial data supplied by IHS Global, at the end of 2018, the UK registered trading fleet:

  • was the eighteenth largest trading fleet in the world
  • as in 2017, accounted for 0.8% of the world fleet deadweight tonnage

The ‘UK fleet’ of ships either owned, parent owned or managed in the UK is larger than the UK registered trading fleet – comprising in total 4% of the world trading fleet, by deadweight tonnage.

Alongside this release, we have published a short document setting out proposed changes to the shipping fleet statistics data tables for future publications. Please contact us as any feedback on the proposed changes is welcome.

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Maritime and shipping statistics

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Updates to this page

Published 13 March 2019

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