Container Shipping Market Overview & Outlook Q4 2023
28 November 2023Supply to outpace demand in both 2024 and 2025
Showing 41 - 50 of 200
Supply to outpace demand in both 2024 and 2025
Many container operators use charter party trade limits as a sanctions management tool when operating liner services between non-sanctioned countries. To provide an alternative contractual solution and to proactively address the current trend to impose sanctions on the shipping industry, BIMCO is currently developing a sanctions clause specifically designed for time chartering container ships.
Reduced volumes are currently posing a major challenge to container shipping due to the COVID-19 crisis.
After a down and up year in container volumes, the current logjams in the system and unbalanced trades will take months to resolve, allowing carriers to profit from high freight rates, and tonnage providers to enjoy lofty charter rates.
BIMCO’s Chief Shipping Analyst, Peter Sand, will be speaking and providing the audience with unique insights on the container market at the European Shipping Seminar on 27 November 2019 in Athens, Greece.
Container rates have been sliding on all the major trading lanes since July 2010, with the exception of a small hiccough round the turn of the year
Demand: We see that the freight rate index levels from China show that rates to Europe have been very stable around 1,800 (index value) since April with a slight negative trend over the last three weeks. Spot prices from Shanghai have been equally firm at around USD 1,900 per TEU. Meanwhile, rates for containers heading for US West Coast continue to soar. Since early April the China Containerized Freight Index for the US West Coast has gone up by 20%.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the global container market grew only 1.5% from 171.0 million TEU in 2019 to 173.5 million TEU in 2023. Without the pandemic, that figure would have been 24.6 million higher, landing at 198.1 million in 2023.
Container ships have reached their highest average age yet at 14.2 years, the highest average age of the three main shipping sectors. The dry bulk fleet has an average age of 11.9 years whereas tankers on average are 12.8 years old.
In 2023, shipyards delivered 350 new container ships with a total capacity of 2.2 million TEU, beating the previous record from 2015 when 1.7 million TEU was delivered. The 2023 record is now likely to be beaten already in 2024.