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THE
intra-Far East trade will continue to power
the demand for containerships this year,
as carriers develop further regional services
within East Asia, writes Alphaliner.
By
the end of June, at least 33 new intra-Far
East weekly loops will have been launched,
based on Alphaliner records. These 33 services
absorb some 98 ships, surpassing all other
tradelanes in terms of the number of ships
taken in.
The
majority of the new loops are focussed primarily
on intra regional trade, whereas a few services
are feeder-oriented. The demand for vessels
in the intra-Far East sector is spread across
the 500 to 5,000 TEU range, propelling upwards
the charter rates for these ships.
Half
of the vessels taken are in the 1,000 to
2,000-TEU area, the traditional workhorse
of the shortsea trades. Such ships allow
access to several popular, but size-restricted
ports such as Bangkok, Haiphong and Yangon.
A further 27 units of above 2,000 TEU have
also been introduced on the North Asia -
South East Asia routes.
The
largest ships used on new intra-Far East
services this year are the 4,500 TEU units
deployed by OOCL on the carrier's North
China/Busan-SE Asia (NPS) service, initially
launched in January with 2,500 TEU ships,
but subsequently upgraded in the last two
months to the 4,500 TEU scale.
The
transpacific trade, especially for the all-water
Far East-US east coast route, on the other
hand drives demand for larger vessels. Six
new Far East-US east coast strings launched
since April this year will add some 60 ships
on this route alone, including 50 panamax
units.
Only
one of the six new all-water strings is
taking the longer Suez route, which allows
the use of overpanamax ships. The FEU US
west coast sector has also taken in about
12 new ships in the 5,000 to 6,000 TEU range.
This is due to the re-structuring of several
existing strings as well as the re-launch
of loops suspended during the winter slack
season, involving the CKYHE/PIL/Wan Hai
and G6 services. This has helped to partly
mop up surplus tonnage that was kept artificially
busy by the US west coast port congestion
last winter.
The
transatlantic sector has also been a major
driver, taking on some 35 additional units
of 1,500 to 5,000 TEU since January. Seven
new transatlantic strings have been launched
this year, of which four on the North Europe
- US east coast route, two on Med - US east
coast and one on North Europe - US west
coast.
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