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Container newbuilding fleet closing in on 16m teu by year-end

After recently passing 15m teu, the global orderbook for containership newbuildings could near 16m teu by the end of the year, according to new analysis from Alphaliner. "Before the end of the year, another 40 or so 'megamax' newbuilding contracts from Maersk, Yang Ming [both expected soon], CMA CGM, and MSC [both believed signed, but yet to be confirmed by Alphaliner] will push the global newbuilding pipeline very close to 16m teu in the last quarter of 2026," it writes today. On the Maersk order, Alphaliner reports that the carrier is exclusively talking to Chinese yards on cost and building slot availability. It added: "Reportedly, the carrier is looking to place firm orders for 12 ships of 24,000 teu, potentially with options attached for a second series of 12. "Tonnage of this category would currently be priced at around $240m per vessel." Meanwhile, according to analysts at Drewry, the global fleet currently totals 34m teu, which means that, even without the unconfirmed 40 newbuildings noted by Alphaliner, the orderbook represents 45% of the current fleet. Almost a third of this - 4.9m teu - has been ordered this year alone, and should orders for the extra 40 vessels be confirmed, this would be likely well over 5.5m teu and make it a record year in terms of newbuildings ordered, beating last year's 5.4m teu. However, shippers hoping the influx of new capacity will lead to a sudden collapse in freight rates may be disappointed, according to Vespucci Maritime chief executive Lars Jensen, who spoke at a Hapag-Lloyd press briefing a few days ago. "The market is not going to drop off a cliff. When we talk about the market crashing, that would be like what we saw in the financial crisis back in 2008. That, for sure, is not what we're looking at," he said. "How I would more likely characterise the coming years is as a regular run-of-the-mill cyclical downturn. This is a cyclical industry, it has been ever since it was born, and this is another one of those cycles. "So a crash? Absolutely not. But do we have too much capacity compared to what we can absorb? Yes, that is also the case," he added. Meanwhile, Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen added that the growing imbalance of the main container trades - particularly the yawning chasm between China's export and import volumes - as well as an expected increase in vessels sent to be scrapped, would mitigate against new capacity. "Of course, the orderbook is bigger than it has ever been, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind - one is that the current fleet is aging, so we will start to see scrapping going up. "We can debate about when and at what pace, but that's definitely going to come up," he said. "There's the growth, especially the growth on some of those dominant legs - when you look at the middle of 2023 until now, the growth on the dominant legs has been about 25%, which is unbelievable. "If you combine that with some of the inefficiencies we see popping up because of trade barriers and tariffs, one cannot rule out that we're going to see another couple of years of pretty decent growth," he said. Mr Habben Jansen also pointed out that lead times for newbuildings had lengthened to near historic highs as slots as shipyards have become increasingly full. "If you look at the orderbook today, where traditionally it used to cover two, or two and a half years of deliveries, nowadays it's more like four, or four and a half years. "If you order a ship today, you will only get it by 2030," he added.

Newbuildings head for Asia-Latin America trades as volumes boom

Deliveries in the past week have been primarily deployed to services between the Far East and Latin America, highlighting growing volumes on these trades. Alphaliner noted that Imabari Shipbuilding completed the 13,932 teu ONE Symphony that will be deployed on ONE's Asia-WCSA AX3 service the pan-Japanese carrier runs jointly with MSC and Hapag-Lloyd. This is the 14th in a series of at least 15 vessels that various Imabari Group yards are building for ONE. Symphony will sail to Qingdao to commence operations. MSC took delivery of the 10,300 teu MSC Licia X from Zhoushan Changhong International Shipyard, and will assign the ship to its solo Far East-East Coast of South America Carioca loop that deploys a fleet of 15 ships of between 8,000 and 12,000 teu capacity. The new dual-fuel vessel is the sixth in a series of ten the yard is scheduled to deliver to MSC this year and next. MSC ordered the series in August 2023 for around $130m per unit. Zhoushan Changhong delivered the MSC Licia X 11 months ahead of schedule, illustrating the improving techniques of Chinese shipbuilding. Another Chinese firm New Times Shipbuilding, delivered the 8,454 teu CMA CGM Austral to Eastern Pacific Shipping. The ship is the last of four sisters New Times built for the Singapore-based non-operating shipowner. All four vessels are committed to long-term charters to CMA CGM, and CMA CGM Austral will serve the French line's Far East-Mexico M2X service. Finally, George Economou's TMS Group took delivery of the 7,900 teu Garnet from South Korea's HJ Shipbuilding & Construction. This is the second of four sisters commissioned in 2024 for $108m each, all for long-term charter to Zim. The Garnet will be assigned to the newly launched Far East-east coast South America ZFS service Zim runs with Hapag-Lloyd, part of a sustained shake-up of vessel sharing agreements on the Asia-South America trades, and features a port rotation of Shanghai-Ningbo-Xiamen-Hong Kong-Yantian-Rio Grande-Paranagua-Itajai-Santos-Rio de Janeiro. It turns in 77 days and will eventually deploy a fleet of 11 ships. So far, ZFS is served by vessels in the size range from 5,500 to 9,000 teu, with both carriers acting as vessel providers. Trade between China and South America has been growing in the past three years, with Container Trade Statistics registering 4% year-on-year growth, to 563,407 teu, in August. China exports machinery, electrical equipment, telecoms infrastructure, and electronics to South America, while importing vital agricultural and mining products.

Early lunar new year means shippers need to plan ahead, says Seko

Seko logistics is urging shippers sourcing from China to bring forward purchase orders and confirm ocean bookings at least four weeks ahead of shipment, as an earlier lunar new year in 2027 threatens to compress the window for moving cargo before factory closures. Falling 11 days earlier than in 2026, next year's holiday starts on 6 February, and Seko MD for the UK and Ireland Paul Lockwood told The Loadstar: "We are already seeing customers adjust critical path planning to bring their ex-factory dates forward to allow for the earlier lunar new year. "One customer has advised they raised their purchase order with their suppliers three weeks before the typical purchase order date to account for this, and to ensure they are not 'back of the queue' in the production cycle." The move reflects growing concern that orders placed too late could miss pre-holiday shipping windows and face delays as exporters compete for capacity, shippers already battling disruption across Asian container networks. Analysis from Sea-Intelligence found vessel delays, caused by typhoons and port disruption, had absorbed around 3m teu of global container capacity, equivalent to 8.5% of the total, compared with a 2011-19 average of 2.2%. "At the same time, ocean carriers typically introduce additional blanked sailings around the lunar new year period, while exporters concentrate shipments into the weeks immediately before the holiday," a spokesperson for Seko's China office told The Loadstar. "This makes the pre-holiday period one of the busiest times of the year for China's exports. We therefore recommend placing bookings at least four weeks in advance and building sufficient time into factory completion, origin collection and port delivery plans." The spokesperson noted that relatively few factories had formally announced their 2027 holiday schedules, but existing plans indicated that production shutdowns would vary by region, with those Seko works with in northern China planning a 25 January-15 February shutdown. However, local practices in some regions often see manufacturers beginning the holiday period up to a week ahead of the spring festival and not fully resuming operations until after the Lantern Festival on 20 February. In southern China, the downtime is expected to be even longer, with some operators set to shut down three weeks ahead of the festivities and not be back up to full production for a fortnight after the holiday. Seko Logistics' client solutions group director for the UK & Ireland, Dan Eckett, said: "Ocean freight is heavily impacted in the weeks leading up to the new year, as exporters accelerate shipments ahead of factory closures. "This creates pressure on vessel space, equipment availability and carrier schedules, so we typically recommend building an additional one to two weeks into transit plans and ensuring supplier bookings are confirmed well before that three-week threshold, not after it." For UK importers, this means production completion dates and port cutoffs must be worked backwards from the intended sailing, with contingency built in for delays at origin, if they are to avoid the viable albeit economically questionable airfreight and sea-air services.