Market steady despite summer lull

摘要

July/August has never been an exciting period in container ship chartering as staff thins out due to summer holidays. Over the years, rate levels often weakened considerably between mid-June and early August. This year conditions have been more stable so far: The New ConTex, that covers the charter market for the most liquid segments from handy to panamax, is down by less than 2.0 % over the past four weeks and even remained steady during the 29th calendar week. In our previous issue, the ConTex was showing a more significant decline of 4.7%. The more benign trend coincided with a slight drop in overall idle container ships capacity down to circa 515,500 TEU (2.5 % of global TEU capacity), as per Alphaliner's latest idle count. There have been further improvements in the very large gearless sector which had seen rates beaten down to around 10,000 $/day in June. The bargain levels that were suddenly available saw various operators return to the market and snap up ships, causing another tightening in tonnage supply and pushing rates up again by several thousand dollars. Two Greek-owned 10,000 TEU units (»Asklipios« and »Aristomenis«) lifted the benchmark in this sector to 18,500 $/ day in flexible periods up to one year with Zim - 4,000 $ higher than what a sister ship achieved in June. The 8,500TEU segments also recorded an increase, with the fixture of the 2011-built 8,586 TEU »Gulf Bridge« at 14,500 $/day to Maersk for 2-6 months period in the trade between Asia and West Coast Central America. According to Al-phaliner, only three units were available for charter in the 7,500-10,000TEU segment at short notice by the middle of July, so expectations of further rises in charter rates in the next round of fixtures seem reasonable.