According to the latest statistics presented by Sea-Intelligence, the number of blank sailings is at its lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
When looking at the percentage of total weekly sailings cancelled on the Asia-North America West Coast trade, Sea-Intelligence found that at its worst (ignoring the peaks), one out of every four sailings was cancelled.
READ: Blank sailings decay: THE Alliance skips 36 per cent of voyages
This is an evident improvement during 2023, even going below 10 per cent this month.
However, as we reach early July, Sea-Intelligence affirms that there is still a modest spike. This might be attributable to the carriers’ desire to manage the spot rate drop.
Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence, explained: “When we look at the Asia-North America West Coast trade in conjunction with the other Transpacific and the two Asia-Europe trades, we see an underlying trend where the trends on each trade more-or-less move in an identical fashion.
“There are a few deviations however, especially for Asia-North America West Coast.
“While the earlier deviation (from second half of 2021) can be explained by the severity of the bottlenecks and vessel queues outside the West Coast ports, no such explanatory model fits the deviation that we see in early 2023,” Murphy added.
In March of this year, the global decline in container demand experienced a notable recovery across the majority of trade lanes, with the exception of US imports from Asia.
More recently, Sea-Intelligence reported that US inventories remained stable, with a growing tendency for wholesale and retailers.
