The inactive containership fleet continues to shrink as strong transport demand creates vessel employment opportunities.
The fact that some factories in China pursued production over the Golden Week holidays adds to a healthy demand for box shipping and, thus, container tonnage.
Capacity deployed on the world’s two largest trade lanes, the Transpacific and Asia - Europe, therefore remains exceptionally high for the time of the year and the inactive fleet’s usual Q4 growth has not yet materialized.
Our graph, which shows the size of the inactive fleet over the past years, illustrates that the downward trend of 2020 still continues.
The year-on-year comparison shows that the latest inactive fleet number is the lowest observed for October in the past five years. It stands at 130 ships for 438,410 TEU, representing 1.8% of the total containership fleet as of 12 October. This marks a decline of 82,421 TEU from Alphaliner’s previous survey, a fortnight ago.
The number of ships kept inactive due to scrubber retrofits outside or beyond routine class maintenance has further decreased from 14 units in the previous count to eleven units for 90,938 TEU, accounting for 21% of the inactive fleet’s capacity.
Source: Alphaliner