Shipping line profits at full steam as trade chaos shows little sign of abating

Shipping line profits at full steam as trade chaos shows little sign of abating
Harry Dempsey January 29 2022 https://www.ft.com/content/24f4c34f-30d1-4eca-adaf-276091f0f974

Persistent ructions on global routes and higher spot rates continue to fuel outsized industry earnings

Operationally the shipping crisis has been a disaster for the box carriers that underpin global trade: schedule reliability hit a record low of 32 per cent in December, with vessels arriving over a week later than planned on average, according to Sea-Intelligence, a consultancy.

That has caused pain for importers and exporters paying more than ever to wait longer for finished goods and parts, but the congestion has done wonders for the container shipping industry’s profitability and balance sheets.

The perennial question occupying the industry — and global economy — is whether the shipping disruption has peaked and how long the journey to something more functional will take.

Lars Jensen, chief executive of consultancy Vespucci Maritime, says the supply chain storm is close to reaching fever pitch — barring any hiccups from coronavirus outbreaks in China to cyber security attacks to critical infrastructure.

“It would appear to me we are reaching the peak of congestion,” he said. “It’s hard to see it get worse in North America and Europe.”

Chinese new year usually provides the industry with some respite as factories down tools and demand for transporting goods across the oceans experiences a seasonal drop.

But Jeremy Nixon, chief executive of Ocean Network Express, one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, says carriers have not cancelled or “blanked” sailings to ports this year, as they typically do in the weeks after the Lunar New Year.

The intention is to clear the backlogs, he added, but even so, the disruption could run at crisis levels for an extended period before any improvement is noticeable.

“We see a continuation of the same for at least the next three months, and the same in America for longer,” he said.

The lack of a discernible trend towards normality is supported by a new indicator, made by Swiss logistics group Kuehne + Nagel. It shows the overall time cargo ships are waiting to berth at major ports around the world taking into account their size. For example, a ship capable of carrying 10,000 20ft boxes, or equivalent units (TEU), waiting for three days counts as 30,000 TEU waiting days. On Thursday, the global total hit 12.5m TEU waiting days.

“Normal is when a container vessel gets to the terminal and is not waiting. Right now it’s like waiting three or four hours for the gate once the plane has landed,” said Otto Schacht, executive vice-president of sea logistics at Kuehne + Nagel. “Normal would be less than 1m TEU waiting days.”