Danish maritime data analysis firm Sea-Intelligence announced that the global container shipping markets are continuing on their path to normalisation.
However, a normal container shipping market, Sea-Intelligence notes, is not the same as a container shipping market with no changes or disruptions; there will always be operational disruptions, a portion of which will be in the form of blank sailings.
“The good news for shippers is that the number of blank sailings is at its lowest since the pandemic began. It isn’t ideal because the level isn’t zero. But no one should expect zero blank sailings, as a normal state of affairs,” stated Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
He added, “When we look at the share of total weekly sailings cancelled on the Asia-North America West Coast trade, we can see that at its worst (disregarding the peaks), one out of every four sailings was cancelled.”
This improved during 2023, falling below 10% in June. However, as July approaches, Sea-Intelligence witnesses a modest spike, which is likely due to carriers’ desire to manage the spot rate decrease.
“When we examine the Asia-North America West Coast trade in combination with the other Transpacific and the two Asia-Europe trades (shown in Figure 1), we notice an underlying tendency in which the trends on each trade move in an almost comparable way,” mentioned Alan Murphy.
However, there are a few deviations, particularly for Asia-North America West Coast. While the earlier deviation (from the second half of 2021) may be explained by the severity of bottlenecks and vessel delays outside West Coast ports, no comparable model matches the early 2023 deviation.
That said, shippers operating in the market now should take the current state of affairs as being very normal indeed. “This is as good as it gets,” pointed out Murphy.
