Container shipping demand sees strong growth in January

Data from Container Trade Statistics (CTS) shows that global container volumes continued to grow strongly in January 2025, reaching 15.4 million TEUs, up 5.8% year-on-year (Y/Y). Based on CTS data, calculations show that the global TEU*Miles index – adjusted for sea distance – rose sharply by 8.1% Y/Y in January, reflecting higher capacity utilization. Meanwhile, container volumes growth on major shipping lanes was also impressive, reaching 12.9% Y/Y.

The TEU*Miles growth rate is even higher through 2024, exceeding 20%, but this is mainly due to the rerouting of shipping routes from the Suez Canal to around Africa due to the Red Sea crisis, rather than from real growth in container demand. January 2025 is the first time that a reasonable Y/Y comparison is available, as shipping routes have been rerouted to around Africa, so the 8.1% Y/Y increase reflects actual container demand after adjusting for shipping distance. However, the timing of the Lunar New Year may have affected the January figures, so this trend should be interpreted with caution.

Another way to assess the strength of the market is to look at the utilization ratio. This index somewhat mitigates the impact from the Lunar New Year period, as carriers have adjusted their networks to accommodate seasonal drops in container demand.

- Asia-Europe: Loading factors at the monthly level have been falling since January 2025, whereas they typically only start to fall after the Lunar New Year. This may be part of the reason why spot rates on this trade fell early in January.

- Asia-North America: In contrast to Asia-Europe, loading factors rose sharply in January, causing spot rates to remain stable longer than those on Asia-Europe. This reinforces the view that the fall in loading factors may have been one of the factors behind the early rate cuts on Asia-Europe.

- Europe-North America: Loading factors fell sharply in January, but spot rates show no signs of a significant decline – at least for now.

Source: Sea-Intelligence, Sunday Spotlight, issue 705

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Source: Phaata.com (According to Sea-Intelligence)

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