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With the Chinese New Year (CNY) celebrations to start this weekend, 2M partners MSC and Maersk have this week blanked a further six transpacific voyages – following those they announced on 12 January – through to the cancelled sailing of the MSC Barbara from Shanghai on 12 February.

The Loadstar also recently reported that effective capacity reduction is considerably higher, taking into account that some ships are being diverted via the Cape of Good Hope on the backhaul to save Suez Canal fess and slow the return to Asia. The concentration of cancellations on certain loops is resulting in temporary services suspensions as consecutive sailings are blanked. Moreover, many of the sailings for North Europe that are not blanked are arriving at their first discharge ports only 60% to 70% full, reducing effective landside congestion.

Meanwhile, according to the latest analysis from consultant John McCown, container imports arriving at the main US west coast ports in December slumped by 19% on 2021, with the top 10 US gateways cumulatively seeing a “near record” decline for the month, of 16.5% fewer containers.

On 11 January, shipping analyst Xeneta reported that container carriers massively blank sailings for the weeks leading up to the Chinese New Year (CNY). In a normal year, Xeneta noted that there are very few blank sailings in the run-up to this major Chinese holiday as shippers stock up on their inventories. On the Far East-North Europe trade lane, blank sailings in the four weeks leading up to CNY are 715% higher than in 2019, currently standing at 226 000 TEU. While there were no blank sailings reported on the Far East-Mediterranean trade route in 2019, an estimated 59 600 TEU of capacity has been withdrawn from the market this year.

Source: Xeneta, ShippingWatch, The Loadstar