Record ship capacity on Asia trade lanes in Oct, Nov

Container shipping is running with unprecedented capacity on all major East-West trade lanes, according to Sea-Intelligence. In a release dated Oct. 29, the Singapore- and Copenhagen-based research firm said capacity rose sharply in October and November. It normally tapers after the Golden Week holiday in China as fourth-quarter demand softens. Sea-Intelligence said this breaks from trends seen from 2012 to 2025.

Sea-Intelligence said capacity on both Asia–Europe lanes was already elevated through 2026 because of the Red Sea crisis, which required extra ships to maintain weekly departures. The October-November jump came on top of that baseline.

It attributed the latest surge mainly to severe vessel bunching. Ongoing port congestion and schedule unreliability in Asia delayed ships scheduled for the third quarter, pushing their sailings into October and November. This, it said, artificially inflated deployed capacity. The release does not mention blank sailings, and it gives no percentage changes.

PortCalls reported in September that congestion at Asian ports was driving global vessel delays. Sea-Intelligence data showed global schedule reliability at 56.4% in July, the steepest monthly drop since January 2021. Shanghai’s on-time rate was 21%, the lowest in 14 years of data outside the pandemic years. Sea-Intelligence CEO Alan Murphy warned then that the backlog would likely spread and cause new delays on major head-haul lanes.

This story was originally published by PortCalls Asia. Read the full story at PortCalls Asia →