Transpacific freight rates rose across the board on continued market disruptions that have boosted carriers’ rate hike efforts. Delays at the Panama canal are starting to affect OCEAN Alliance ships as well, with THE Alliance ships already forced to divert to the Suez and Cape routes. This has reduced the capacity available for the USEC, with the situation only expected to ease from mid-January. MSC has redeployed 19,000 teu ships to its FE-USWC service, with capacity to the West Coast current
CoFIF traders took profit last week with near-term contracts gaining favour over the longer dated contracts despite of the 25% jump in the SCFIS index last week. The mood turned bullish again following the Red Sea disruptions over the weekend, which sent all CoFIF contracts to their daily limit up on 18 Dec, forcing a trading halt for the first time since CoFIF was launched in August. Rates are expected to strengthen in the coming week until the Red Sea situation is resolved.
Register Free Trial [https://www.linerlytica.com/register/?utm_source=W202351] Several carriers have paused Red Sea transits over the last 4 days but diversions to the Cape route are limited to Israel-linked ships at the moment. Barring a naval convoy solution, carriers could be forced to divert all ships to the Cape route which would raise teu-mile demand by at least 2.5m teu or 9% of the global fleet that would result in an immediate capacity shortage. Spot freight rates have started to rise
SITC will launch a new China Japan Vietnam 7 (CJV7) service from 22 December 2023 to call at Ningbo, Shanghai, Hakata, Moji, Tokuyama Kudamatsu, Shanghai, Ningbo, Xiamen, Danang, Haiphong, Ningbo. The service will turn in 3 weeks and will deploy 3 ships - the 907 teu SITC TIANJIN, 1,011 teu SITC SHIDAO and 1,403 teu SITC QINZHOU.
The withdrawal of Israeli owned and operated ships from the Red Sea routes have started, with 42 Israeli-linked ships rerouted away from the Suez over the past 3 weeks. 20 of these ships on the Asia-Med and North Europe routes have been diverted to the longer route via the Cape of Good Hope while another 22 ships have been redeployed to other trades that avoids the Red Sea. Of note, 5 Zodiac Maritime-owned ships of 19,460 teu operated MSC have been redeployed from FE-Europe to the FE-USWC Jaguar
Zim has announced higher rates for its Asia-Med Zim Med Premium (ZMP) service that has been rerouted to the Cape route from its regular Suez routing from December 2023 in order to avoid the Houthi attacks on ships using the Red Sea passage. The lengthened ZMP routing will raise the total roundtrip time to 15 weeks compared to 10 weeks previously. The service will retain it current calls at Busan, Qingdao, Ningbo, Shanghai, Dachan Bay, Port Klang, Haifa, Ashdod, Mersin, Yarimca, Ambarli, Port Kl
MSC has upgraded its FE-US West Coast Jaguar service to the 19,000 teu scale with ships that have been redeployed from the Asia-Europe routes due to their Israeli links. The Jaguar service calls at Nansha, Yantian, Ningbo, Shanghai, Long Beach, Busan, Nansha and used ships of 13,000 to 19,000 teu previously. Since the Hamas-Israel conflict started in October and attacks on vessel traffic on the Red Sea has escalated in recent weeks, MSC has shifted 6 ships of 16,500-19,500 teu owned by Zodiac
The Panama Canal disruptions failed to stop rates to the US East Coast from slipping last week, with THE Alliance carriers the main casualties from the reduced transit slots. 2M and OCEAN Alliance services are not affected as yet with only minimal delays on their Panama services. East Coast capacity remains sufficient to meet market demand despite draft restrictions that has limited full container intake for the Panama passage. Rates to the West Coast rose slightly last week but uneven utiliza
Congestion at Panama has started to ease after THE Alliance cancelled all of their southbound Panama transits on their all-water services EC1, EC2 and EC6 as of last week, with omissions also planned on all of the northbound transits starting from next week onwards. At least 5 of these ships on the backhaul route will be returning via the Cape of Good Hope and avoiding the Suez Canal as well. However, all of the headhaul sailings on the 3 affected all-water strings will still take the Suez Route
The average age of the containership fleet currently stands at 13.8 years, although it drops to 11.1 years if calculated on a teu-weighted basis due to younger age of the larger ships. Amongst the Top 15 carriers, MSC has the oldest fleet with an average age of 16.8 years while Maersk has the oldest fleet on teu-weighted terms at 12.8 years. Despite the aging fleet, carriers have been slow in scrapping their older tonnage, with just 163,000 teu scrapped year to date compared to new deliveries