Container ships newly opened their routes, with idle capacity falling by 20%

Lloyd's Intelligence's latest data on idle capacity of container ships shows that idle capacity has dropped by 146,000 teu to 565,000 teu in the past two weeks, a sharp drop of 20%.

Existing idle capacity accounted for 3.6% of the total capacity of active service, which means that about 1% of capacity returned to the market in two weeks. As of March 29, a total of 290 container vessels were idle. The 290 vessels included both short-term idle capacity of 5 to 24 days and idle capacity of more than 25 days.

Market highlights last week were none other than the “Maersk Evora”. The 2011, 13,100 teu container vessel was re-launched after being idle for more than 45 days in Klang (Port Klang, Malaysia) and is expected to arrive from Qingdao Port next month. The cargo was re-operated on a new route.

The "MaerskEvora" is the only containership with more than 13,000teu in the idle list of Loweer Intelligence Containerships. It is the only idle capacity container, which means that the remaining idle capacity no longer exceeds 13, 000teu figure of a container ship.

Previously, the container ship brokerage firm continued to report that the chartered market may erupt again in the spring. At this time, Lloyd's Intelligence's idle capacity data was undoubtedly reflected in the forecast of the former. On Thursday (29th), the ConTex Index of the Hamburg Shipowners Association (HSA) rose by 7 points in three weeks, and the quotation for the 24-month rental of 1,700teu container ships with spreaders was 6, USD 621/day, up by USD 131/day from three weeks ago, has become the leader of the rise.

Recently, some shipowners have announced new routes, including Hanjin Shipping and COSCO, respectively, which recently announced that they will open the Far East to Gulf of Mexico route by the end of April. The route will invest 8 4,000teu container vessels. Affected by this, the market's more idle capacity will be diluted.

According to Lloyd's Intelligence data, 37 of the idle capacity are currently 3,000teu to 4,999teu container ships, so the potential capacity demand in the future will be favorable to this part of the capacity.

(Xu Wei)