Forecasting an excess of 4.3 million TEUs of empty containers in North America by 2023

 
Sea-Intelligence has revisited its analysis of supply chain normalization and its potential impact on empty container flows.

"Pre-pandemic, the transportation time was 45 days on average, peaking at a transportation time of 112 days in February 2022, which has since been reduced to 88 days, as per the measurement on 26 August 2022", pointed out Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

The data for this model comes from the Flexport Ocean Timeliness Indicator (OTI) data, which measures the time from when goods are ready at the exporter to when they are delivered to the importer.

As shipping times lengthen, containers are tied up in longer supply chains, causing initial freight rates to rise in the second half of 2020, as there aren't enough empty containers to get to Asia in time. According to the report, with a huge shortage of empty containers, shippers have had to order more new containers that are built in Asia and then put into the supply chain.

As transit times decrease, these additional containers will again be released from the supply chain and begin to accumulate, mainly in Europe and the US. Sea-Intelligence predicted this development in February 2022 and this week analyzed whether their predictions are on the right track.

Source: Sea-Intelligence.com, Sunday Spotlight, issue 580

The blue line in the figure shows Sea-Intelligence's current forecast for excess empty containers to hit the North American market, trans-Pacific shipping alone, and the orange line shows the forecast of Analysts reported in February 2022.

"If transportation time is back to 'normal' by early next year, we will see the release of 4.3 million TEU of excess containers into North America, which cannot be expatriated, within the planned network operations. This will potentially overwhelm empty container depots in the US, an issue which is already beginning to materialise," Murphy said.

 
Read more:

• Container freight rates from Asia to the US continue to set a new decrease
• Container freight rates continue to drop sharply on main routes
• Global container shipping industry profits hit a record $63.7 billion in Q2-2022
• Container ship charter market 'cools down'

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

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