Asia-Nordic trade routes on oversupplied ocean carriers plan to significantly increase the number of blank voyages in October, and it is expected that the fourth quarter capacity reduction will increase significantly.

According to data from Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis, global orders are close to 30% of the active fleet and exceed 7 million TEUs. Shipping companies will empty 320,476 TEUs, or 21.5 percent of available capacity, during the month after the plant shutdown for the Golden Week, which began Oct. 1 on National Day. That's up from 8.7 percent in September; so far, November's short position rate is 6.6 percent.

Alan Murphy, chief executive of Sea-Intelligence, said the drop in spot rates over the past two weeks showed that the traditional peak season for major Asia-Europe and trans-Pacific trade had not really materialized, and that what was really achieved was a large amount of capacity. While demand usually slows after Golden Week, the scale of the October suspension illustrates the scale of the excess capacity faced by container traffic on major trade routes between East and West. "

Drewry, a maritime consultancy, estimates that 2.5 million TEUs of capacity will be delivered by the end of this year and 3 million TEUs by 2024. This is a particularly serious problem for Asia and Europe, as at least 65 percent of the orders are made up of vessels with a capacity of more than 15,000 TEU, which will be mainly deployed on this trade route.

OOCL received the third of 12 orders for 24,188 TEU vessels in June, while the first of six 24,136TEU vessels has been delivered to Ocean Network Express. Hapg-Lloyte has begun receiving an order for 12 23,500 teu ships. In early June, Maersk 2M Alliance and Mediterranean Shipping Company (Mediterranean Shipping Co.) added two giant freighters to the AE6/Lion route from Asia to Northern Europe.

In the past two weeks, interest rate levels in Asia and Europe have fallen sharply. Since the first week of August, the Asia-Northern Europe average spot price has fallen by 32%, and the current level is 1,211 US dollars per FEU, and the Asia-Mediterranean price is 1,843 US dollars per FEU, which is the lowest level since the end of 2020.

According to the Container Trade Statistics (CTS) latest data show that despite the European import market continued to high inflation, but from January to July Asia-Northern Europe's seaborne freight volume increased by 3.3, reaching 9.68 million TEUs.

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