Sea-Intelligence: Blank sailings on trans-Pacific route increased sharply

Sea Intelligence says the main challenge in measuring the market's supply/demand strength is that demand data is "notoriously lagged".

Therefore, in terms of market power, the best real-time metric is the capacity aspect, where blank sailings are a key factor, the Danish maritime data analytics firm noted.

The figure below shows the increase in blank sailings on the Asia-North America West Coast (NAWC) service from June to August. Sea-Intelligence clarifies that this figure shows blank sailings during the June to August is the same as in each individual week of 23-30.

Number of blank sailings on the transpacific route (Source: Sea-Intelligence.com, Sunday Spotlight, number 625)

The average number of train cancellations on a weekly basis in June increased sharply between weeks 23-26, indicating that some blank sailings were announced late.

The orange bars in the figure represent the development of July, which can see a sharp increase from week 25 to week 26, i.e. at the end of June.

Finally, it can also be seen that there has been an increase in blank sailings for August in the last two weeks of July. This level of blank sailings on the Asia-North America West Coast service was significantly higher than on the three other routes.

Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence commented: “Digging deeper, we find a clear correlation between the sharp uptick in blank sailings activity on the Transpacific at the end of June, and the subsequent improvement in spot rates.”

He went on to explain, "There was also an uptick in blanking activity on Asia-North Europe at the end of June, although it has not resulted in spot rate increase, implying that the 'tool' of blanking sailings in itself has been insufficient to stem the seeping rates. For Asia-MED the carriers have been quite unwilling to blank sailings. One explanatory variable here might be the very large rate premium on the Asia-MED versus the Asia-North Europe trade."

Read more:

• CULines ends participation in long-haul route
• Transpacific container freight rates increase due to strike at Canadian ports
• Forecast of the container shipping market in the second half of 2023

Source: Phaata.com (According to Sea-Intelligence, ContainerNews)

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