The world is a very different place to when the last edition of Drewry’s Container Forecaster report was published in December. The only certainty is supply and demand volatility.

The short term impact of the coronavirus health crisis is a sharp hit to global container volumes and carrier earnings, but Drewry expects that the medium-term impact will be manageable provided the virus spread is contained.

Newbuild prices of freight container boxes hit a three-year low at the end of 2019, as intense competition in an oversupplied market heaped more pressure on box manufacturers.

This year will be yet another challenging one for the container industry in terms of capacity management, but they will cope.