The total number of blank sailings has plateaued for a few weeks now, with carriers seemingly satisfied with their current blank sailing announcements. In the past week however, a few sailings have been re-instated as carriers see sufficient demand to warrant “un-blanking” these sailings.
However, it is also clearly shown by the data that this is purely a very small change to the overall development in blank sailings. It cannot be seen as a rebound in demand, nor can it be construed as “strong” demand. It can only be seen as another indication that the carriers’ approach is to blank sailings aggressively to ensure decent utilization on the vessels that do indeed sail, and in the process avoid rate declines.
At the same time, the data also show that especially the median vessel size in Asia-North Europe has increased substantially from 16,000 TEU at the time of Chinese New Year to 17,000 by the end of Q2. In this trade, the carriers therefore seem to favour the usage of their largest vessels and setting aside “smaller” vessels.
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TEL