The cascade effect

摘要

All north-south trades are suffering from a common problem -the cascading of larger vessels from the east-west trades. This redeployment has stemmed from the introduction of ultra large container vessels (ULCVs) of over 13,000 teu onto the Asia-Europe trades, which in turn forced smaller vessels of 10,000 teu and larger onto the transpacific trade, and resulted in a further cascading of vessels onto the north-south routes. Given the volumes on the north-south trades, this represented nothing short of an avalanche of empty shipboard slots. There was some cause for carriers' optimism that these vessels would be filled. Almost all of the emerging markets on the trades had been showing strong rates of economic growth. At the same time, most of the global terminal operators have been winning concessions in these markets with the promise of introducing modern container handling equipment and increasing terminal capacity.