Analysts expect seafreight volumes to fall
Copenhagen-based maritime analyst Sea-Intelligence sees reasons to assume that the demand-led spikes seen during the pandemic that propelled container shipping to record earnings might be over.
Sea-Intelligence has gone over the numbers on supply and demand from February 2019 till June 2022, drawing the conclusion that volumes are going down.
"Demand growth is slowing" with two consecutive months of a global vessel utilisation rate below 90%. Currently, it is mainly supply chain disruption such as port congestion that is keeping rates high.
Global demand was consistently at a level of 10% higher than capacity, from November 2020 to January 2022. However, the gap has been narrowing, and the most recent data from June, shows a gap down to 2% compared to the pre-pandemic levels." (sh)