With the upcoming Golden Week holiday in Asia in early October, as factories close, and container demand to and from Asia declines, shipping lines respond by blanking sailings to match supply with the lower demand, according to latest Sea-Intelligence report.
“However, when we first looked at the blanked capacity at the 2023 Golden Week two weeks ago in issue 629 of the Sea-Intelligence Sunday Spotlight, the carriers had not planned anything near to what was necessary to meet the blanked percentages of pre-pandemic years,” pointed out the Danish analysts.
Now, there are 29 additional blank sailings scheduled on the Transpacific, and 18 more on Asia-Europe.
According to Sea-Intelligence’s report, scheduled capacity reductions on Asia-North America West Coast went from 3.7% to 14.1%, from 2.2% to 16.1% on Asia-North America East Coast, from 6.8% to 19.9% on Asia-North Europe, and from 7.7% to 21% on Asia-Mediterranean. “This means that carriers are now on track to blank capacity in line with both 2019 and the 2017-2019 average,” commented Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
