Ocean liners have cancelled a large number of sailings amid soft market demand

Drewry has launched a weekly cancellation tracking service, which provides a snapshot of the total number of announced cancellations versus scheduled sailings for each container shipping alliance. In the eighth week of the year (February 20-26) and 12th week of the year (March 20-26), a total of 71 cancelled sailings were announced on trans-Pacific, trans-Atlantic, Asian-Nordic and Mediterranean routes, representing a cancellation rate of 10 percent.

According to the Drewry report, 65 percent of the blank sailings will be for trans-Pacific eastbound, 28 percent for Asian-Nordic and Mediterranean, and 7 percent for trans-Atlantic westbound. Drewry Shipping analysts said The Alliance(Hapag-Lloyd, YML, ONE and HMM) had announced 43 sailings cancellations over the next five weeks, This was followed by OCEAN Alliance(CMA CGM, Cosco, Eva and Oriental Overseas) and 2M(MSC and Maersk), which cancelled 12 and four sailings respectively. Meanwhile, 12 blank sailings were deployed in non-alliance service during the same period.

Drewry noted that efforts by shipping liners to adjust supply and demand have failed to reverse the downward trend in spot prices, while East-West volumes have also continued to weaken. After a large number of blank sailings and service suspensions during the Chinese New Year period (Jan 21 to Feb 20), fewer sailings will be cancelled in March than between July 2022 and February 2023, leading to more capacity being released.

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