The next six months of container shipping will see double-digit capacity injections, and more and more container shipping companies will be operating independently from their ship-sharing alliances, with more slots on board to be filled.
is not just that spot container freight rates remain low, the overcapacity dynamics we are familiar with are also different from the environment faced by previous economic downturn cycles. Spot prices rose slightly in July, which may reflect the rise in freight volume and some tightening of capacity, and then more and larger ships were launched in the second half of the year.
according to S & P Global's PIERS data, from April to June, US imports from Asia were slightly higher than the level before the 2019 pandemic, but from the beginning of the year to June, total imports were still 30000 TEUs lower than the same period four years ago and more than 240 million TEUs lower than the record first half of 2022. In June this year, eastward trans-Pacific freight volume reached a YTD one-month high of 1.4 million TEUs, compared with 1.48 million TEUs in June 2019.
Matson Navigation Chairman and CEO Matt Cox Matt Cox said that the recent Asia-US trade deployment capacity has improved, the trans-Pacific market in a more normal consumer demand and retail inventory levels transition, trade dynamics or will be in the rest of the year gradually improved.
More container capacity coming soon
airlines canceled 10.6 percent of their Asia-Intelligence capacity, according to June data from Sea-North America, by the end of July, airlines would accelerate that pace, reducing available capacity by 17.8 percent by canceling flights. As shipping lines better match capacity with demand and freight volumes have risen, container liner stock-out levels are easing compared to the industry's total fleet.
Although carriers in the March to June period to remove more capacity, but the suspension, the Panama Canal draught restrictions and steadily increasing imports are to push up the spot exchange rate of the cumulative impact, as the progress of the month, the maritime companies are more inclined to increase capacity.
According to the latest Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis data report, shipping companies will inject more capacity into the routes connecting Asia and North America. By the fourth week of August, the total capacity of the trans-Pacific container ship fleet will increase by 19.2 percent year-on-year; by early September, the ship space between Asia and North America will increase at a double-digit percentage rate, with year-on-year growth of 10 percent to 25.2 percent.
These airlines are operating more and more capacity without alliance partners, and container shipping companies have to adjust their networks to cope with the reduction in demand, suspend services, cancel flights, add new port calls, reduce flight frequency, and reduce flight speed.
freight forwarding network
