Volatility in the capacity offered in Asia to the North American West Coast (NAWC) trade more than tripled over the last years, driven by blank sailings, vessels sailing off-schedule, and vessels of varying sizes on the same service.

Sea-Intelligence said in a new analysis that for the past 3 years, capacity volatility has been ranging around 250% higher than in 2012, with variability often reaching up to 300% higher.

Compared to 2012, capacity volatility on Asia-NAWC has almost quadrupled and the Danish maritime consultancy company said even with the adjustment of the data to show capacity volatility as a percentage of overall capacity, the pattern remains quite similar.

Figure 1 shows the capacity volatility for Asia-NAWC when compared to 2012. [Source: Sea-Intelligence]

"Another element to consider is whether this increase is driven by a few but extreme events. However, when we look at the 25% and 75% quartiles – the former shows the change across 25% of the weeks with the least volatility, and the latter shows the change for 25% of the weeks with the highest volatility – the trend is increasing for both," said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.

"It means that volatility is increasing not only in the weeks with high changes, but also in the more stable and 'calm' weeks," he added, noting that this shows an increased volatility in the overall supply/demand balance on Asia-NAWC.

"To the degree that spot rates are driven by the actual weekly supply/demand balance, this capacity volatility means that the underlying driver for spot rate formation on Asia-NAWC has become progressively more unstable over the past 13 years – creating a much more volatile and unpredictable spot rate in itself," Murphy said.

To get a better understanding of the severity, Sea-Intelligence said it took an absolute value of the week-on-week change, so that any change is recorded as a positive value, irrespective of whether the change is positive or negative. Furthermore, to look deeper into whether there is any systemic change, it calculated capacity volatility as a 52-week moving average.