Weekly analysis: 2 Jul 2020

9 sailings have been withdrawn from the Transpacific, Transatlantic & Asia-North Europe/Mediterranean trades in week 31 (27 July to 01 Aug 2020), bringing total blank sailings in July’20 to 36, versus 539 scheduled sailings (6%).

The major cancellations in July’20 are on the Transpacific and N Europe & Med to North America trades, while we see strong recovery in Asia-North Europe trade with only 7 blank sailings in July’20, the lowest figure seen since April’20.

The Alliance and Ocean alliance share in the capacity reduction in July’20 is respectively 44% and 20% while 2M is 17%.

The number of cancelled sailings during July’20 is the lowest since the Covid-19 outbreak, which shows that although the Alliances are still using the blank sailings as a regulator to maintain their rates at a healthy level, the space availability will certainly improve in July.

Drewry urges shippers to consider the capacity and lead time effects and to select sailings based on the latest data and on the incidence of cancellations by alliance, by week.