In the next few years the containerized marine transports on the Asia-Europe route will suffer still from an ability excess



The Danish SeaIntel Maritime Analysis, society of advising and studies in the field of the containerized marine transport, considers that in the next few months and years the navigation companies that operate on the Asia-Europe route could be forced to diminish the number of own services of line in order to try to maintain the how much more possible offer aligned to the question.

The company of Copenhagen observes that the next breaking in of large portacontainer on this East-West route will remarkablly increase the ability to offered hold, unless the number of the services is not reduced. Since between the second half of the year of this year and the second half of the 2018 ships will be introduced in service ulterior that will increase of +11.5% the ability offered, according to SeaIntel this will determine the necessity to close a service for each of the three shipowning alliances that operate on this route, that is 2M (the companies Maersk Line and MSC), the Ocean Alliance (CMA CGM, COSCO Shipping, Evergreen Line and OOCL) and the THE Alliance (Hapag-Lloyd/UASC, "K" Linens, MOL, NYK and Yang Ming).

SeaIntel finds that, confronting the second half of the year of 2019 with the second half of the year of the 2017, if the alliance 2M only increases own ability offered on the Asia-Europe route of +3.2%, instead THE Alliance will increase own ability to +11.9% and Ocean Alliance will quite increase it of +24.6%.

The Danish society states that, since the more realistic scene indicates an increase of +5% of the question, it is improbable that the market of the containerized exchanges Asia-Europe can absorb this additional ability without having to rerun to a decrease of the number of services weeklies magazine.

In particular, SeaIntel considers that already in 2017 it would have to be cancelled a service permanently, decrease of the offered ability that however the society previews that he is more probable is obtained with the cancellation of specific departures. According to the calculations of SeaIntel, in the last trimester of this year the excess of hold offer will be pairs to 28.300 teu to the week, excess pairs medium to 2,2 services weeklies magazine that would have to be eliminated in order to maintain to a balance between supply and demand.

Moreover, for SeaIntel, within the second half of the 2018 maintenance of the market balance it would demand the closing of a service weekly magazine by each of the three alliances, with the possibility to altogether introduce a single new service in 2019 when the delivery of great portacontenitori ships would have to diminish. What - SeaIntel specifies - than however could not happen if the new order of ships of the ability to 22.000 teu will be confirmed potential by CMA CGM. In these days, in fact, various news agencies and Chinese newspapers and of other nations have announced that the French shipowning group would have tightened a preliminary agreement with the ship yards Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co and Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding (Group) Co. of navalmeccanico group Chinese CSSC for the construction of nine portacontainer of this ability.

An alternative in order to resolve this problem without to close services on the Asia-Europe route - SeaIntel observes - could be constituted from the transfer of ships on other routes and this, in order to compensate the closing of three services weeklies magazine on the route between Asia and Europe, would determine the requirement to distribute about 30 great ships on other routes of traffic. Anything but probable hypothesis, specifies the managing director of SeaIntel: "the carriers - Alan Murphy explains - could choose to introduce some of the new great ships in other traffics, however this would involve a still greater necessity to reduce the number of services in such traffics, as draft of traffics more limited breviums and regarding that Asia-Europe".