"With Golden Week coming up (starting October 1st), it presents carriers with the golden opportunity to blank more sailings than they historically would, and likely come under less pressure from cargo owners, for artificially managing freight rates by cutting capacity short," said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.
For much of 2020 and 2021, Sea-Intel said carriers have struggled to maintain capacity in line with the stresses of demand, which meant that vessels were chock full, leading to terminals and ports starting to fill up (as containers could not be moved fast enough), and vessels started to get stuck outside of the port.
"In the past few months, however, demand growth has stalled, vessels are not fully utilised, and freight rates have been dropping consistently and considerably," the maritime analyst said.
"This is where the carriers would naturally resort to tactical blank sailings, to stem the bleeding in freight rates."
Source: Sea-Intelligence
Sea-Intel noted that this is what they see as well, with carriers' vessel deployment for the coming weeks.
On the Transpacific, it said capacity reductions are slated to be 22%-28% of deployed weekly capacity in the weeks following Golden Week, whereas the peak reduction in those weeks was 15%-17% in 2019, and an average of 9%-11% in 2014-2018.
More blank sailings between Asia-Europe
"We see higher numbers in Asia-North Europe as well, with the peak capacity reduction following Golden Week at a little under 20%, which, while in line with 2019, is higher than the 2014-2018 average," it added.
The maritime analyst further said that Asia-Mediterranean on the other hand is the only trade lane of the four to see capacity reduction during Golden Week 2022, in line with 2014-2019.
