During the COVID-19 pandemic, carriers shifted capacity to the big East West trades to take advantage of the sky high freight rates for export cargo from the Far East to North America and Europe.
This resulted in a capacity reduction on some North South routes. As the liner shipping sector has normalized and rates are under pressure on the main routes, carriers have increased their focus on North South routes.
Alphaliner figures show a 4.5% year-on-year capacity reduction on the Transpacific, and an impressive capacity increase for services to/from Latin America (+17.5%) and Africa (+21.1%).
Almost 243,000 teu slots have been removed from the Asia – North America trades since Nov’22, reducing the share of this route in terms of global fleet deployment from 20.9% to 18.5%, with a further reduction expected as the THE Alliance has temporarily closed the ‘EC4’ loop.
Source: Alphaliner
