LONDON's Drewry Maritime Research expects the global pool of shipping containers to contract in both 2023 and 2024, reports Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide.
While inflation in many countries is depressing demand, increasing geopolitical instability is affecting investor sentiment, say Drewry analysts.
With both factors depressing growth prospects for world trade, shipping lines and lessors, are ridding themselves of surplus boxes built up over the past two years, they say.
Drewry's latest report on the container equipment market forecast that the box pool will decline by 2.6 per cent this year, with a further contraction expected in 2024.
The last time the container pool posted a year-on-year decline was in the 2008 global financial crisis when the total number of containers in service dropped from 27.9 million TEU to 26.9 million TEU, a decline of 3.7 per cent
FEUs are the most oversupplied at present because in late 2020 and throughout 2021, this was the type of box that was in greatest demand.
In 2021, this size of container accounted for over 85 per cent of all dry freight containers produced and this in a year of record production when in excess of 6.6 million TEU were produced.
The scale of oversupply means that any equilibrium for FEU high-cube containers is unlikely to occur before 2025, unless of course there is a sharp turnaround in trade.
This year has seen both ocean carriers and leasing companies curtail their box purchasing programmes considerably, with these two groups unlikely to take delivery of more than 1.1 million TEU of new containers in 2023.
In 2024, Drewry expects a modest recovery to take place in their purchasing plans, largely based on more ageing containers being replaced, and for this to increase more strongly in 2025.
SeaNews Turkey
While inflation in many countries is depressing demand, increasing geopolitical instability is affecting investor sentiment, say Drewry analysts.
With both factors depressing growth prospects for world trade, shipping lines and lessors, are ridding themselves of surplus boxes built up over the past two years, they say.
Drewry's latest report on the container equipment market forecast that the box pool will decline by 2.6 per cent this year, with a further contraction expected in 2024.
The last time the container pool posted a year-on-year decline was in the 2008 global financial crisis when the total number of containers in service dropped from 27.9 million TEU to 26.9 million TEU, a decline of 3.7 per cent
FEUs are the most oversupplied at present because in late 2020 and throughout 2021, this was the type of box that was in greatest demand.
In 2021, this size of container accounted for over 85 per cent of all dry freight containers produced and this in a year of record production when in excess of 6.6 million TEU were produced.
The scale of oversupply means that any equilibrium for FEU high-cube containers is unlikely to occur before 2025, unless of course there is a sharp turnaround in trade.
This year has seen both ocean carriers and leasing companies curtail their box purchasing programmes considerably, with these two groups unlikely to take delivery of more than 1.1 million TEU of new containers in 2023.
In 2024, Drewry expects a modest recovery to take place in their purchasing plans, largely based on more ageing containers being replaced, and for this to increase more strongly in 2025.
SeaNews Turkey
