Container shipping capacity growth focuses on Africa and Middle East trades

Container shipping capacity growth over the past year has been concentrated on Africa, the Middle East and Indian Subcontinent trades, according to AlphaLiner’s latest analysis of global fleet deployment.

The capacity of the global container fleet increased 7.3% during the past twelve months to 33.2 Mteu. This represents the addition of 2.27 Mteu slots to the fleet in this period.

Most of the new capacity went to Middle East and Indian Subcontinent-related trades (607,430 teu slots), liner services to and from Sub-Saharan Africa (575,410 teu) and the Far East – Europe route (451,074 teu).

Alphaliner’s analysis of global fleet deployment earlier this year had already highlighted these three fast-growing trades: between May 2024 and May 2025 African services had expanded 8.6%, Middle East and Indian Subcontinent services 12%, and Far East – Europe 11.7%.

Six months later, however, these percentages have increased spectacularly with 27.3% year-on-year growth for Sub-Saharan Africa, 14.9% to/from the Middle East and ISC, and 6.1% on Far East – Europe.

The latter remains by far the largest route for global liner shipping, deploying a fleet capacity of 7.84 Mteu (23.6% of the overall fleet).

Source: Alphaliner