During the eighth
week (20 February – 26 February) and the 12th week (20 March – 26 March) of the
year, 71 cancelled sailings were announced throughout the Transpacific,
Transatlantic, and Asia-North Europe & Mediterranean trades, indicating a
10% cancellation rate.
THE Alliance leads blank sailing race 1
THE Alliance leads blank sailing race 2
According to
Drewry’s report, 65% of the blank sailings will be in the Transpacific
Eastbound traffic, 28% in Asia-North Europe and the Mediterranean, and 7% in
the Transatlantic Westbound trade.
The Drewry
shipping analysts said THE Alliance
(Hapag-Lloyd, Yang Ming, ONE and HMM) has announced 43 cancellations for the
next five weeks, followed by OCEAN Alliance (CMA CGM, COSCO, Evergreen and
OOCL) and 2M (MSC and Maersk) with 12 and 4 cancellations, respectively.
Meanwhile, 12 blank sailings were deployed in non-alliance services over the
same period of time.
Drewry noted that
attempts of the ocean carriers to align supply with demand have failed to
reverse the decline in spot rates in a market where East-West load factors also
continue to weaken.
Drewry said that
between the eighth and the twelfth weeks of the year, only 71 cancellations
have been announced, compared to 171 between the fourth and the eighth weeks of
2023.