Idle tonnage passes a million teu as bigger box ships go into lay-up

The amount of containership capacity idled has surged again, the latest survey from Alphaliner reporting 315 vessels (1.18 million teu) in lay-up, representing 4.3% of the global fleet.

In its fortnightly review of the inactive container vessel fleet, the consultant recorded a big jump from the 271 ships, for 942,035 teu, shown as idled two weeks previously.

It said the idle tonnage figures had been boosted by the addition of several larger ships, including four 12,500 to 18,000 teu vessels and three of more than 18,000 teu, either anchored, or sent to shipyards for surveys and repairs.

Hitherto, the main increase in the inactive containership fleet has come from small and medium-sized vessels, but increasingly carriers are deciding to mothball their surplus large ships that have been displaced by even bigger newbuild arrivals.

Moreover, a ratcheting-up of carrier blanking programmes, including introducing winter service schedules to mitigate weak demand prospects, has resulted in de-facto network reductions and a consequential tonnage oversupply.

For example, according to maritime and supply chain intelligence firm eeSea, next week will see the peak of this quarter’s cancelled sailings from Asia to the North American west coast.

“There are 19 blanks in week 43 alone across the major west coast ports (Canada included),” said Destine Ozuygur, head of operations at eeSea.

“I suspect this is the two-to-three-week transit time ‘ripple effect’ of Golden Week blanks coming out of Asia. These week 40 Golden Week blanks on last-load ports out of Asia would be arriving sometime between weeks 42 and 44 and peaking on week 43, if we are looking at their first discharge arrivals into North America,” she said.