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Container ship capacity deployed on the major East-West routes currently stands at 43.7%
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Of this, 31% is serving the Asia-North America loop, while 10% is deployed on the Asia-North Europe trade lane
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The container liner fleet grew 4.5% in 2021 to reach 24.97 million TEUs by January 2022
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The intra-Asian trade was the worst hit by the East-West capacity upgrade with some 331,200 TEU slots removed, a capacity reduction of 10.8%
Last year witnessed a massive shift in container ship capacity toward the profitable East-West routes at the expense of regional traffic within Asia and Europe, with capacity on the two largest East-West trades now at nearly 44% of the total fleet.
Container ship capacity deployed on the major East-West routes currently stands at 43.7%, according to DHL Global Forwarding’s February ocean freight market update. Of this total, 31% is serving the Asia-North America loop, while 10% is deployed on the Asia-North Europe trade lane.
The container liner fleet grew 4.5% in 2021 to reach 24.97 million TEUs on January 1, 2022. But growth was not evenly spread across all trades, said DHL.
At the start of this year, 22% of the total container fleet was deployed between Asia and North America, up from 17.5% on January 1, 2021. Carriers added 1.30 million TEUs of capacity to this major East-West route over the course of the year.
Comparatively, container traffic at the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on the US West Coast increased by a more modest 13% and 15.7%, respectively, last year.
DHL observed that the extra tonnage added to the Asia-North America trade lane was not needed to cope with a corresponding surge in cargo demand, but was meant to compensate the huge efficiency loss as many ships face long waiting times at anchorages.
The intra-Asian trade was the worst hit by the East-West capacity upgrade with some 331,200 TEU slots removed, a capacity reduction of 10.8%.
This was followed by trade to and from Africa with a capacity reduction of 6.4%, followed by the intra-European trade, where 4.5% of the capacity disappeared.
Capacity plans
On the capacity plans of carriers, CMA CGM, COSCO Shipping Lines, Evergreen and OOCL will be launching in April their Day 6 Product under the OCEAN Alliance. The upcoming changes concern the four carriers’ joint East-West trades and primarily the two main front-haul corridors from Far East to Europe and from the Far East to North America.
The updated product will include 42 liner services and use 352 container ships with an estimated fleet capacity of 4.43 million TEUs. OCEAN’s new setup of 42 loops compares to a total of 39 liner services with 333 ships under the current product.
But only one of the three new loops, namely, a Far East-US East Coast service to be launched by CMA CGM, will actually be entirely new. CMA CGM plans to launch this new service in early May, providing 10 ships with a capacity of 10,000 TEUs.
Wan Hai Lines has lined up eight 2,500-2,800 TEU ships for a new Far East-US East Coast loop. The first sailing from Vietnam is planned for the end of January. All eight ships nominated for the new loop are currently active between Asia and North America as extra sailers.
A direct service will be launched by ZIM in February connecting North China and Australia, the third direct loop between China and Australia to be provided by the carrier, said DHL.
The first of six megamax-24 type container vessels that the Chinese CSSC yard group will build for Evergreen Marine floated out of Changxing Island Shipyard in early January. With an intake of 24,004 TEUs, the conventionally powered ultra-large container ship will be the world’s largest in terms of nominal box intake and the first to break the “magic” 24,000-TEU barrier.
The giant ship is scheduled for delivery around May 2022, and will be deployed together with the five other ships with intake of 23,992 TEUs on Evergreen’s flagship service linking Central China and Taiwan to Northern Europe.
Photo by Dominik Lückmann on Unsplash
