The significant disruptions in services due to the round-of-Africa routing naturally raise questions about the impact on deployed capacity.
Here comes Sea-Intelligence’s Trade Capacity Outlook database, which shows the differences in offered capacity between the immediate pre-crisis and the present situation.
The following figure illustrates, for each of the four major East/West trades out of Asia, the cumulative change in offered capacity over the fill period from mid-December to the present date.
“We have deliberately not included future capacity as this would overlap with Chinese New Year effects. The cumulative changes up to the present date would therefore more ‘cleanly’ represent the Red Sea impact,” said the Danish analysts.
According to the Sea-Intelligence analysis, a noteworthy observation is that the most significant capacity reduction, compared to the planned deployment in mid-December, has occurred on the Transpacific trade route.
Specifically, the Asia-North America East Coast trade lane has experienced a decrease of -7.5%, while the Asia-North America West Coast trade lane has seen a decline of -6.9%. Additionally, the capacity impact on the Asia-North Europe trade lane has resulted in a contraction of -4.9%, while the Asia-Mediterranean trade lane has witnessed a reduction of only -1.4%.
