What are the trends in the international shipping market in 2025 (International Shipping News and Information)

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2024-12-23 00:00

Quick look! Forecast analysis of the container shipping industry in 2025

　　Around this time last year, many container shipping analysts were discussing the market in apocalyptic terms, and similar statements are emerging this year.

　　The pessimistic forecasts do come with a caveat: that no unexpected catastrophic events disrupt the market again.

　　Like last year, the market fundamentals indicate that freight rates will drop significantly as the supply-demand balance is firmly tilting in favor of shippers—if you just take a cursory look at these data.

　　Darron Wadey, an analyst at Dynamar and author of last week's published 'Dynamaliners Trades Review 2024', wrote: 'Despite new ships being delivered at an unprecedented pace in 2023 and 2024, the number of orders is so large that capacity can only expand.'

　　According to DynaLiners Review, there are a total of about 3.2 million TEU with 470 ships delivered just this year.

　　'If scrapping resumes—which is possible—it will be trivial compared to what’s coming. The average scrapping volume over the past decade has been 247,000 TEU, which means the global container fleet could grow to over 31.4 million TEU, with an annual growth rate of 10%. This is six percentage points higher than what cargo growth requires.'

　　Wadey told Seatrade Maritime News: 'We should have already experienced a downturn: after peaks in capacity growth in 2008, 2010, and 2015, the market immediately fell into a slump and airlines suffered huge losses.' This did not happen after the post-pandemic boom due to shippers' reactions to the situation in the Red Sea and other disruptions.

　　However, shipping companies are 'optimistically believing that the current market has support', with some shipping companies raising their revenue forecasts for 2024. Linerlytica stated that indeed Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk have raised their full-year forecasts due to strong performance in Q3, but the consultancy believes airlines cannot stick to their GRI targets set for November.

　　'I can't shake off this feeling that what we’re seeing this year is more about avoiding chaos from potential rerouting through the Red Sea or strikes by U.S. dockworkers rather than actual demand growth.'

　　'Nevertheless,' Wade acknowledged, 'the U.S. elections may further boost freight levels as shippers seek to avoid increased tariffs promised by both presidential candidates; however, Donald Trump's suggested import regime is much stricter than Kamala Harris's version.'

　　'The possibility of new tariffs on Chinese goods could lead to soaring freight rates as shippers rush to load imported goods early. Will we see continued demand from China to Mexico as a 'backdoor' into the U.S.? The threat of further strikes at ports along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast next January is also very real,' states Xeneta's outlook report for 2025 co-authored by Chief Analyst Peter Sand and Senior Shipping Analyst Emily Stausbøll.

　　Xeneta warns that there are other potential obstacles in supply-demand dynamics highlighting tensions in the Taiwan Strait and Bangladesh as well as possibilities of Middle Eastern crises spreading throughout regions including the Persian Gulf.

　　'Meanwhile,' Xeneta believes that compared to previous periods of tension, today's shippers have more advantages because existing large data scales allow logistics managers to monitor individual freight corridors and benchmark carrier schedule reliability.'

　　'The question is whether container shipping will become a buyer's market next year? According to Wade, the answer is 'not necessarily'.'

　　'He pointed out that while shippers will clearly enjoy lower freight rates, if there are no other disruptions in global supply chains requiring reductions in supply amid severe overcapacity.'

　　'This would mean cutting fleet numbers and implementing operational measures such as skipping voyages or shortening planned weeks (both measures used during overheated markets) or completely canceling services.'

　　'As a result,' Wade said, 'service levels will be affected. Given that poor service levels are already a common complaint among shippers, it remains to be seen whether they (or perhaps regulators or politicians) will tolerate this situation especially after airlines have enjoyed substantial profits for so long.'

　　'This concludes all content shared by Baiyun Network for this issue. If you have any service needs regarding international logistics, please consult Baiyun Network's professional international logistics consultants.'

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