Carriers sacrifice capacities to save prices
The Copenhagen (Denmark)-based maritime consultancy Sea-Intelligence has put forward its latest estimates on the shipping companies’ potential losses in 2020 and the development in blank sailings. The number of blank deep-sea sailings has currently risen from 45 to 212.
The experts expect the majority of blank sailings to be in full swing during the period of the next five to six weeks. The largest capacity withdrawal is seen in the Asia-Europe trade, where approx. a third of hitherto capacity has been pulled out of the market.
With regards to the financial consequences of this flattening of activities, Sea Intelligence concludes that "the impact on the carriers...depends on the carriers’ pricing discipline going forward."
Scenarios range from a 10% volume and trade decline in 2020 or USD 6 billion compared to 2019 and cause all main carriers combined to lose USD 0.8 billion in 2020. If the reactions of the financial crisis in 2009 repeat themselves, the carriers might "collectively lose a staggering USD 23 billion in 2020." (mw)