Official Statistics

Shipping fleet statistics tables: user feedback request

Published 29 March 2023

Changes to shipping fleet statistics tables: user feedback request

The port freight statistics team regularly reviews the contents of its publications to ensure they remain relevant and meet user needs. We have recently reviewed the shipping fleet statistics tables and would welcome feedback from users which can be provided by completing our user feedback survey or by emailing the maritime freight team at the following email address.

Proposed changes shipping fleet table structure

We have been looking at improving the shipping fleet tables to make it easier for the user to find the statistics of most interest. This note outlines proposed changes to the structure and format of the tables to streamline them.

We propose to group the tables as follows:

Category Title
FLE01 Historic trends
FLE02 Ownership, vessel type and sub-type
FLE03 World fleet

A detailed list of the new tables and a look up to the old tables is available in the proposed index.

The tables will be redesigned and made accessible to meet accessibility regulation and easier to navigate through.

For example tables FLE0204, FLE0304 and FLE0402 will be grouped into one table with a raw data tab and a filterable table tab. The latter will have the years across the top, and the vessel type down the side, with functionality to filter on measure (Number of vessels, Gross tonnage, Deadweight), ownership (United Kingdom, Crown Dependencies, Overseas Territories and Red Ensign) and size (100GT and over, and 500GT and over) similar to PORT0202.

Changes to vessel type categories

DfT procure shipping fleet data via open competition in April 2022 the contract was awarded to Sea/ by Maritech for the first time. This change in data provider has led to changes in the level of granularity for the vessel types. The new vessel type categories are:

Vessel type code IHS data vessel type Clarkson data vessel type
1 Oil tanker Oil tanker
2 Oil-chemical tanker [Not available]
3 Chemical tanker Chemical tanker
4 Other tanker [Not available]
5 Liquid gas tanker Liquid gas tanker
7 Bulk carrier Bulk carrier
8 Refrigerated cargo Refrigerated cargo
9 Specialised Carrier Specialised Carrier
10 Container Container
11 Ro-Ro passenger Ro-Ro passenger
12 Ro-Ro Container [Not available]
13 Ro-Ro Other Cargo Ro-Ro Other Cargo
14 General cargo-passenger [Not available]
17 Passenger Passenger
20 Other fishing Fishing
21 Fish catching Fishing
22 Offshore (except supply) Offshore
23 Offshore supply Offshore
24 Towing pushing Towing pushing
25 Research [Not available]
26 Dredging Dredging
30 Cruise Cruise
31 Bunkering tanker [Not available]
32 Other work vessel Other work vessel
33 Non-seagoing ship Non-seagoing ship
34 Non merchant ship Non merchant ship
35 Non propelled vessel [Not available]
36 Non ship structure [Not available]
37 General cargo General cargo

This means that some of the categories which were available in the IHS dataset are not present in the Sea/ data due to a reduced level of granularity for the vessel type. All vessels are still included but may be classified as a slightly different type. This means that rather than having a vessel classified as chemical-oil tanker the vessel will be either a chemical or an oil tanker.

Changes to frequency of publication

The Department for Transport have discussed changing the frequency of publication of these statistics, one option could be to publish FLE0100 on a monthly basis. We would value feedback from users on how useful more frequent publication would be given resource needed to do this.

We would really appreciate if you could answer the user feedback survey questions about the new design, structure and frequency of our tables and release. You can also email the maritime freight team.

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Contact details

Maritime and shipping statistics

Email [email protected]

Media enquiries 0300 7777 878