Despite the Golden week holiday period in China and the ongoing deterioration of freight rates, the commercially idle container vessel fleet remained low and virtually unchanged in early October. Vessels idling in proportion to the global 32.7 Mteu fleet was tallied at 0.9%.
While 0.9% is the highest proportion of idle tonnage to total fleet in a year, at this stage the liner sector can still be considered ‘fully employed’ and no ‘structural idling’ detected.
As of last week, Alphaliner’s latest survey reveals that the total capacity of idle vessels increased slightly by 7,155 teu over the past fortnight. The fleet was made up of 91 cellular ships.
The blank sailings scheduled around the Golden Week holiday period have not yet resulted in a significant shift in overall tonnage inactivity for now.
Instead, carriers and shipowners appear to have utilized this period to send vessels into drydocking. The capacity tied up in yards, either for maintenance, repair, retrofit or conversion, rose back up to 2.1% of the total cellular fleet, from a low of 1.6% in the previous count in September.
Source: Alphaliner
