Almost two years after the global carriers started re-routing Asia–Europe services via the Cape of Good Hope to avoid Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, some Far East–Europe loops still remain understaffed.
Alphaliner data shows that the nine biggest liner operators currently need 461 vessels to fully staff all 31 Far East–Europe liner services operated by OCEAN Alliance ( cmacgm , COSCOSHIPPING and Evergreen), Gemini Cooperation ( Maersk and HapagLloydAG ), Premier Alliance ( OceanNetworkExp , HMM and Yang Ming), and MSCCargo.
A count on 14 September, before carriers start blanking voyages for the Chinese Golden Week holiday (1-8 October), however revealed that ‘only’ 425 ships were deployed. This means that trade is currently missing 36 vessels that would be needed to guarantee ‘uninterrupted’ weekly sailings on the aforementioned 31 services.
With an extremely small idle fleet and the complete absence of ‘big’ vessels from the spot charter market, some carriers have no way of filling those gaps. Last summer, this shortage of tonnage pushed spot ocean freight rates from China to North Europe to a level that the market otherwise only witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite the fact that the Red Sea crisis remains far from resolved, and that there is a continuous lack of tonnage, this effect on freight rates has completely evaporated. Spot rates from Shanghai to North Europe have declined 45% over the past ten weeks, with double digit decreases in the last three weeks. This clearly hints at a rate war between some of the major operators.
Source: Alphaliner
