Cash-rich shipowners double container ship order book in 2021
26 August 2021What’s not to like about 2021 for container shipping?
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What’s not to like about 2021 for container shipping?
Record high influx of capacity burdens market
Weakened supply/demand balance challenges liner operators
Overcapacity remains in the sector, where fleet growth is extremely uneven.
From mid-2020, global container export volumes saw strong growth, and combined with increasing port congestion it caused supply chain challenges and historically high liner operator financial results which have been the norm since. In September 2022, however, container volumes dropped below volumes recorded in the same month in 2019 for the first time since mid-2020 and statistics just released by Container Trade Statistics have confirmed the trend.
Reduced volumes are currently posing a major challenge to container shipping due to the COVID-19 crisis.
During the past eighteen months, a couple of trends seem clear in the freight market for container shipping. Primarily, the demand for imported containerised goods in Europe and US is going up, reflecting the clearly improved economic development. Secondly, the vessels become larger and larger as the quest to lower unit costs is high on the agenda everywhere. Thirdly, the major freight rate volatility is mostly on European-bound containers.
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.
For the first time in exactly half a year – container spot rates out of Shanghai have increased after falling for 25 consecutive weeks. On the last day of 2010 – Shanghai Shipping Exchanged disclosed rising spot rates for all destinations including the main trading lanes going to Europe and US West Coast. Following a 29% drop on average spot rates, the index rose 4% during the 52nd week of 2010.