Blank sailings data, when put into the context of container demand data, can be useful in calculating the underlying capacity utilisation on the major East/West trades, according to Danish maritime data analysis company Sea-Intelligence.
A caveat with this simplistic approach, is that this is not necessarily the “true” capacity utilisation, as e.g. vessels from Asia to Europe would also be carrying capacity/cargo allocated to other trades, such as the Asia to West Africa or Asia to Middle East trades, say the Danish analysts.
“However, relative changes in time would be representative, given the same constraints apply throughout,” they add.
Source: Sea-Intelligence.com, Sunday Spotlight, issue 638The aboive figure shows the underlying capacity utilisation, with the blue line showing the actual utilisation, and the orange line denoting Sea-Intelligence’s projection for the rest of the year.
