Container shipping portfolios differ sharply between European and Asian carriers, with Asian lines generally performing better due to stronger Far East export exposure, according to Alphaliner.
Alphaliner’s latest quarterly report on operating margins for the big carriers showed that Asian lines are generally doing better than their European counterparts.
One of the reasons is that Europe-based operators deploy more tonnage on services to and from Europe, where exports have been sluggish. Asian carriers focus more on the healthy exports from the Far East. A comparison of the trading profiles of the top-10 carriers confirms the different priorities in terms of fleet deployment.
If we look at the total liner fleet, a quarter of all capacity is deployed between the Far East and Europe. The Asia-North America trade ranks second with 16% of the global fleet trading. Services to and from Latin America take third place with 14%.
Hapag-Lloyd and HMM are the only two top-10 carriers with matching trading profiles, albeit with different percentages. HMM is actually offering more than half of its overall capacity (53%) on Far East-Europe.
ONE and ZIM are the only top-10 carriers which have the highest percentage of their fleet deployed on the Transpacific. For ZIM, this percentage exceeds half of its total fleet capacity (52%).
For the other eight top-10 carriers, the Far East-Europe trade is the largest in terms of fleet deployment. This is more than in a comparable survey from three years ago when only six carriers had Far East-Europe as their number one trade. In May 2023, Latin America was Hapag-Lloyd’s most important trading area with 24% of its fleet deployed on these services.
Source: Alphaliner
