Ships

Cooling demand and an increase in relet candidates have seen charter rates coming under fresh pressure. Rates are faltering across all size segments as the weakness in the feeder sizes is spreading to the panamax and larger sizes. Zim has sought the early termination of several sub-panamax and panamax ships with remaining charters of 2-3 years that has already started to put pressure on charter rates as these ships return to the charter market. Resale transactions are also cooling down althoug

Charter rates are starting to falter with carriers forced to reconsider their peak season deployment plans especially on the transpacific where demand has remained very weak while the risk of an escalation in port congestion has been substantially lowered following the ILWU agreement reached last week. The sharp decline in transpacific rates has already forced all the new carriers apart from Swire/UWL out from the trade, with Pasha and CU Lines the latest micro-carriers to withdraw. The increas

The number of containerships currently undergoing scrubber and LNG retrofits stand at 15 units for 122,150 teu with 6 units below 5,100 teu class. The retrofit fleet is currently at the lowest level since March 2022 and continue to fall with the bulk of the retrofit candidates already completed. Pasha’s HORIZON RELIANCE (to be renamed GEORGE II) is nearing completion of its LNG engine retrofit in China. The 43 year old US flagged ship has been docked since August 2022.

Charter rates continue to diverge, remaining firm for the larger ships in the Panamax and larger segments while softening in the smaller sizes of below 3,000 teu. Demand in the larger sizes have been surprisingly resilient despite the ongoing weakness in the freight markets. All prompt vessels of 5,000 teu and above have been snatched up, with the tight supply to persist until the end of the year. But the supply-demand balance for smaller ships have started to weaken, with a significant number

Imoto Lines has received the first of 3 ships of 1,096 teu for the domestic Japanese trade with the KISO that was delivered on 10 May 2023 by Kyokuyo shipyard, although the first port call was made on 2 June 2023 at Kobe. The ship is deployed on the Yokohama, Tomakomai, Sendai, Yokohama route for its maiden service. Imoto will introduce 2 more sisterships to its domestic feeder routes by the end of this year. These ships are the largest ships in the Imoto, surpassing the 670 teu units that are

Transpacific vessel capacity is rising again after continuously dropping for the last 12 months, but remains 16.7% lower compared to the peak in April 2022. The recent increase was due to the injection of neo-panamax newbuildings of 13,000 to 15,000 teu into the transpacific trade. Meanwhile, Asia-Europe capacity has continued to increase due to the injection of new ships on the route, with the 2M announcing the addition of 9 more ships on their Asia-Europe services from June. Despite the reduc

Containership operating speeds have fallen by 5% since last year as carriers implemented slow steaming to cut operating costs. The speed reduction is most apparent in the largest size segments above 4,000 teu where operating speeds dropped by between 1 to 2 knots compared to just 0.5 knots reduction for ships of below 4,000 teu. According to Linerlytica’s estimates, slow steaming has helped to remove up to 6% of the effective vessel supply globally but the impact has started to reverse as  avera

The torrent of new containership deliveries has started with #MSC setting new ship size records twice last week, with more ULCS units to come in the weeks ahead. MSC has widened its gap against Maersk to 587,000 teu with the divergence even greater if idled capacity is taken into account. #Maersk has 298,000 teu currently idled compared to just 68,000 teu from MSC, with the burden of idling excess capacity unevenly shared by the carriers. The idle containership fleet currently stand at 738,014

The active fleet has started to creep upwards and is now at their highest levels since 2020, reaching 17.7m teu on lower idling and drydocking positions as well as easing congestion in North America and Europe. The pick up in vessel scrapping has hardly made a dent on the overall supply of ships as it is limited to smaller ships. The delivery schedule for new ships is picking up as well, with over 2.5m teu of new capacity scheduled in 2023. The idle containership fleet continued to fall, with

The year ahead for the container shipping market will be largely driven by how carriers manage the capacity glut, with 2.56m teu of new ship capacity scheduled for delivery in 2023 against projected deletions of just 0.25m teu with overall fleet growth expected to at 8.8% compared to 4.1% in 2022. In addition, surplus tonnage is coming back from capacity rationalization and the impact of port de-congestion that would release much of the 10% of the fleet still tied down at port anchorages current