GERMAN shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd has expanded its container
fleet anticipating that more cargo owners will hold
onto boxes longer because of the virus scare and the resulting equipment
imbalance.
"Turn times will also slow
because people need to keep their boxes for longer," said Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben
Jansen, reported IHS Media.
"If you accept that global
trade volume will go down by the 10 to 11 per cent indicated by Clarksons, if
we increase the container fleet we can accommodate a turn time that is 10 to 15
per cent slower," he said.
The
decision by the world's fifth largest liner company to expand its container
fleet 5 to 10 per cent - 100,000 TEU have already been added - was made to counter growing turn times as
shippers are forced to store boxes filled with consumer products or spare
manufacturing parts in economies that are still mostly closed.
That is exacerbating an equipment
imbalance that has already been influenced by blank sailings that have removed 30 per cent of
capacity from the Asia-Europe and transpacific trades.
Forwarders have already warned
that cargo flows were becoming more uneven across key markets as the extensive
blank sailings further influenced a natural container imbalance on headhaul and
backhaul trades.
With shippers holding on to boxes
longer and the equipment imbalance intensifying, Mr Habben Jansen said that
expanding the container fleet was necessary to ensure the availability of
boxes.
Source : HKSG.
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