Intra-regional and Africa trade capacity drops as carriers prioritize lucrative East-West routes
The cellular liner fleet grew 4.5% in 2021 to reach 24.97 Mteu on 1 January 2022.
This growth was not evenly spread across all trades, however. On the contrary, last year witnessed a massive shift in capacity towards lucrative East-West routes at the expense of regional traffic within Asia and Europe and also capacity deployed on Africa-related services.
At the start of this year, 22% of the total cellular fleet was deployed between Asia and North America, up from 17.5% on 1 January 2021.
Carriers added 1.30 Mteu of capacity to this major East-West route over the course of last year, which represents a staggering 31.2% increase.
Source: Alphaliner
