The container shipping industry will endure a further three years of volatility due largely to the ongoing supply surplus in the market, says SeaIntel Maritime Analysis senior consultant Thorsten Boeck.
"The overall capacity situation is driven by the fact that there is a large number of very large vessels that are coming into the market over the next couple of years, and they are pushing out what used to be large vessels, of around 9 000 TEU, onto secondary services.
"We are already starting to see this happen and it will happen increasingly over the coming years. Capacity is growing more than demand, and we believe the market is in for a rough, volatile ride for at least three years,” Boeck told The Container Shipping Manager.
Some industry insiders and analysts have expressed hope that the current mismatch between supply and demand would be resolved by 2014; however, SeaIntel’s outlook indicates that we will not see a turnaround at least until 2016.
If this is an accurate assessment, one would imagine that the liner landscape that we see today will be drastically altered by that time.
Simply put, carriers will not be able to sustain losses for another three years. Some lines did manage to post a profit last year, but many did not. For the companies that were able to earn money in 2012, these would be the likely candidates to survive the current turbulence, but for those that are still in the red, they could very well be gone, or merged into more financially stable companies by that time.
