Over the past couple of weeks, many of the Worlds largest shipping companies have announced that they are mothballing some of their ships and reducing their capacity.  To date, 165 vessels representing 430,000 TEUs have been idled and there are likely 35-40 more that will be announced shortly.  This represents approximately 3.5% of the world container ship fleet.

There are a couple of interesting trends wrapped up in this.  If you examine the sizes of the idled ships, only 25 of them are over 5,000 TEUs.  Of those 25, only 6 are between 7,500 and 10,000 TEUs.  Put another way, 85% of the ships that have been taken out of service are smaller ships and only 3.5% are the largest ships.  I do expect some additional large ships to be idled over the coming months, but they still will represent a disproportionately small percentage.  It seems clear that, where given a choice, shipping liners would rather operate the larger, more efficient ships.

This should come as no surprise – large ships are more efficient.  Shipping is a low margin business.  Therefor, any efficiencies that can be gained should be gained.  I think it’s safe to infer from this that once the widened Panama canal is opened, shipping liners will want to employ the largest vessels possible.  Panama let it slip at a recent conference that the widened canal will now allow ships up to 13,000 TEUs, not the 8,000 TEUs that had previously been expected.  This means the largest container ships in the world will be able to be included on an all-water East Coast/Gulf Coast rotation.

Now the problem becomes where can those ships call that can handle their physical size and the amount off cargo they will offload.  Virginia and Halifax can handle them, but who else is ready?