Maritime operators adjust to uncertainty as capacity/pricing pendulum starts to shift

August 1, 2022

Home » Maritime operators adjust to uncertainty as capacity/pricing pendulum starts to shift
One of the lessons that ocean containership operators have learned very well, after pre-Covid years of slack profits, is the importance of aggressively managing capacity—on a weekly, if not daily, basis. By one industry estimate, that focus, coupled with two years of Covid– and e-commerce–fueled volumes, helped the world’s major containership lines generate more profits in the past two years than in the previous 20 years combined. Moving into the second half of 2022, that focus remains as intense as ever, particularly in the face of rising bunker fuel costs, persistent inflation that’s driving up other expenses, and a demand cycle where capacity is slowly loosening and beginning to swing pricing power back to the shipper.  “It’s a murky picture,” says Lars Jensen, principal at consulting firm Vespucci Maritime. “It does look like the market is softening. The [ship] alliances are very good at managing capacity. I expect they will try and do the same if the market ....

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