Mediterranean and North European ports are going to be particularly hard hit by the recent rash of cancelled container shipping services according to the Sunday Spotlight from Sea-Intelligence.
According to the Danish consultancy the number of blanked sailings has now reached 250-300% higher than what is normally seen in the Chinese New Year period.
As a result of these vessel cancellations in the second quarter of 2020 Sea -Intelligence analysed where the port calls would be lost. The analysis pointed to La Spezia operated by Contship Italia, part of the Eurogate Group, along with Tangiers and Damietta in the Mediterranean would see a reduction of 40% in vessel calls. While in Northern Europe Felixstowe, Zeebrugge and Antwerp will see a substantial 30% reduction in vessel calls, with only seven European ports not schedules to see any blank sailings.
“The Asia-Europe trade lane is also where the world’s more than 100 ultra-large container vessels operate. As such, the calls to individual ports from these behemoths is an important part of both their operations and finances. These vessels regularly call 41 different ports in Europe,” said the Sunday Spotlight.
This shows that “the capacity reductions performed by the carriers will not have an even impact across different cargo gateways, and as a consequence this might serve to strengthen the longer-term competitive positioning of some ports over others in Europe,” said Sunday Spotlight.
