If previously the main shipping companies worldwide containerized ships used their ships on the routes East-West on the basis of rather long-term programming, with limited changes in the hold capacity offered in 2025 A real upheaval of this pattern has taken place consolidated since there has been a significant change structural. This was revealed by Sea-Intelligence, a research that analyzes in particular the shipping sector containerized, based on its own stability analysis operating on the Asia-North America and Asia-Europe shipping routes that examined the loss of operational capacity, i.e. - explained the company - the sum of the total capacity injected and withdrawn from a variable route - specified Sea-Intelligence - which highlights the degree of volatility by quantifying the extent of changes in the use of ships by of shipping companies.

Sea-Intelligence highlighted that the data for 2025 indicate a significant structural change, with companies that are Move from a stable use of container ships to a Adjustment of the high frequency capacity. The company found that this trend was more pronounced on the Asia-North Europe route, where in 2025 Hold capacity withdrawal reached 11.0 million TEU containers compared to a historical average of 3-5 million TEUs recorded between 2012 and 2019. The 2025 figure is +138% higher than in 2023, indicating - explained the company - that carriers are actively introducing and withdrawing tonnage at a rate never before seen in precedence.

If for the Asia-North Europe route the volatility in 2025 is was extreme, was also evident in relation to to the Asia-North America and Asia-Mediterranean routes. In particular, the Pickup rate for the Asia-North West Coast route America reached a record 10.4 million TEUs, with a increase of +32% over 2024. The withdrawal rate relative to the route Asia-Mediterranean reached 6.9 million TEUs, up by +80% compared to 2023 and +21% compared to 2024. Relatively to the Asia-East Coast route of North America, in 2025 the rate of shrinkage remained high at 6.6 million TEUs, although it recorded a relatively more gradual increase than to the other routes.

Overall, this data show that the relative stability of ship deployment of the pre-pandemic era is over and that the shrinkage rate on these key routes suggests that the rapid and record pattern of "cascading buffer", where capacity flows from primary to has been replaced by a dynamic system, in which ships are frequently replaced to accommodate the fluctuations in short-term demand and to manage the operational interruptions.