Shipping lines sharply cut capacity during Golden Week in China

Danish maritime data company Sea-Intelligence analyzed data on the number of blanked sailings from the leading major shipping lines. The analyst said that blanked sailings have long been a common practice for carriers to help balance supply with demand. Sea-Intelligence points out: “This is what we would call tactical blank sailings.”

However, for much of 2020 and 2021, ocean carriers have struggled to maintain capacity in line with demand stresses, which has meant ships are full, leading to terminals and ports start to fill up (because containers can't be moved fast enough), and ships begin to get stuck outside ports, according to Sea-Intelligence's analysis.

Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence, noted: "This level of port congestion meant that carriers could not fulfill their weekly departure obligations, resulting in forced or operational blank sailings".

However, over the past few months, Danish analysts have found that demand growth has stagnated, vessels are not fully utilized and freight rates have plummeted continuously.

“This is where the carriers would naturally resort to tactical blank sailings, to the stem the bleeding in freight rates," said Murphy, who went on to explain, "With Golden Week coming up (starting on 1 October), it presents carriers with the golden opportunity to blank more sailings than they historically would, and likely come under less pressure from cargo owners, for artificially managing freight rates by cutting capacity short."

On the transpacific service, capacity reductions are expected of 22%-28% of deployed weekly capacity in the weeks following Golden Week, while the peak reduction in those weeks is 15 %-17% in 2019 and an average of 9%-11% in 2014-2018, according to the report.

Rate of blanked sailings on Asia - US West Coast (Source: Sea-Intelligence)

"We see higher numbers on Asia-North Europe as well, with the peak capacity reduction following Golden Week at a little under 20%, which, while in line with 2019, is higher than the 2014-2018 average. Asia-Mediterranean on the other hand, is the only trade lane of the four to see capacity reduction during Golden Week 2022, in line with 2014-2019," said the analysts.

Read more:

• Container freight rates continue to drop sharply on main routes

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

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