Blank sailings could cost the shipping industry $1.9 billion as the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) continues to erode supply chain volumes, especially outbound goods from China.
According to Sea-Intelligence Consulting, millions of containers are being pulled from box ships as China’s factory slowdown continues in the wake of Covid-19.
Lines in the meantime are vincreasingly struggling to cushion the impact of plummeting volumes.
Latest figures that the consultancy aggregated from the Trans-Pacific route, a trend barometer of global shipping, show that of 111 blank sailings so far this year, 48 were because of the virus outbreak in China.
Other cancellations were said to be because of the Chinese Lunar New Year.
Of the 75 blank sailings recorded on Asia-Europe routes, 29 were said to have resulted from Covid-19.
Sea-Intelligence CEO Alan Murphy told international freight portal, Supply Chain Dive, markets appeared to be stabilising.
“Even though the carriers have announced seven more blank sailings (by early last week), which corresponds to an additional seven removed from capacity, the pace of new blank sailings has clearly declined.”
He said this flicker of possible recovery is based on “a belief from carriers that volumes will slowly be brought back to normal levels”.
It has also since been reported that infections of Covid-19 are decreasing globally, with new cases almost exclusively being contained to the Chinese city of Wuhan where Covid-19 originated.
