The world’s leading shipping companies, in an unprecedented wave of orders for everything from family parts to medicines, are setting the record for the largest container cargo for this year.
The last holder, Jacques Saadé, 400 metres long, owned by Frenchman CMA CGM SA, arrives in Malta on Tuesday to close an opening that began in Singapore two weeks ago, on the other hand, 20,723 complete containers, which employ about 90% of the ship’s capacity and dethrone the Algeciras of HMM Co. , South Korean champion since May.
The fact that the shipment named after the late CMA CGM founder carried the biggest burden in its history on its first voyage is a testament to a slowing global economy that continues to advance. for family products has exceeded expectations and consumers stay at home buying more online.
For ocean liners, converting customers’ personal tastes is also a blessing that forces them to think in the short term about the number of ships to deploy. This is a sensitive balancing exercise for a capital-intensive industry that tries to anticipate economic adjustments years in advance and adjust capacity accordingly.
“Such an immediate replenishment has never taken a position in the history of container transport,” said Lars Jensen, a Copenhagen-based representative and former AP executive. Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s largest container ship. “It is not imaginable to expect what this will mean for 2021 realistically. “
Some corporations are benefiting from providence right now, Maersk stopped before searching well beyond 2020 when he raised his profit forecast before this month. Meanwhile, the charge for transporting a 40-foot container across the Pacific is still close to $4,000. nearly three times the rate at the beginning of the year, even after the same high season of the industry from August to mid-October.
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In this environment, “only an idiot would wait for the future,” said Alan Murphy, CEO of the Analytics company Sea-Intelligence.
Still, there’s nothing to try. Delving into the data, Murphy said the uptick in demand for goods is very asymmetrical globally, basically due to U. S. purchases of home and workplace supplies, recreational equipment, gardening tools, furniture, clothing, and books.
“All of this would mean that the existing outbreak is short-lived and will be particularly minimized if padlocks are lifted and American consumers can redirect their consumption to services,” Murphy said.
On the other hand, Oxford Economics sees the divergence in the finishing of the goods and that it will last some time. He expects the global product industry to return to grades until the end of 2019 by the end of next year, but said, “We don’t see a similar recovery until 2023. “
If this is the case, freight prices can remain high and face the same old seasonal trends.
Sanne Manders, a leading operations officer at Flexport, a San Francisco-based carrier, said a result may simply be shipping rates that are not transmitted as usual after the Golden Week vacation in China in early October. mid-February.
“You see a weakening of shipping after Golden Week, which happens a little bit, but we don’t expect it to go far,” Manders said. “No inactive shipments available”.
In addition to demanding pressure, structural adjustments are being made in a country that had a few dozen major players a decade ago and is now less than 10, so when carriers cancel out, anticipating a slowdown in the global economy, for example. , rates will inevitably be volatile.
“The supply-demand scenario lately is in favor of carriers,” Manders said. “The customer simply buys a lot of things. “
“It turns out that the container industry has nevertheless gained faith in source management. The big question, which everyone takes on, is how long this field will last. When the economy recovers, will carriers continue to grow with capacity?”I think some will, while others will do it with firearms.
– Lee Klaskow of Bloomberg Intelligence
Few places illustrate how the container industry is running lately than the two ports in the Los Angeles area, the largest gateway for Asian exporters to the world’s largest economy.
Long Beach Harbor, which dealt with a record 2. 3 million boxes in the third quarter, recently designated an unused domain for garage overflow for bottlenecks between ships, trains and trucks. Lately there are 1,300 empty and complete boxes on site.
That’s because the nearly 2 billion square feet of warehouse dominance in the Los Angeles domain are almost full.
The port may even see a 2% to 3% expansion in container volume this year after an approximate first part of falls, said Mario Cordero, executive director of the Long Beach facility. “My fear for 2021 comes down to the direction of the economy going, and that’s doubtful right now.
– Vince Golle’s