Eastbound transpacific and westbound Asia/Europe industry-wide capacity grew despite concerns over lower-than-expected demand in the second half of the year and poor first quarter revenue from most large liner carriers.
On the transpacific, the increase in allocated capacity was even higher on the Asia/U.S. West Coast trade, which grew 9.6 percent to more than 311,000 TEUs of weekly allocated capacity. Allocated capacity is ComPair Data's estimate of the service capacity allocated to a particular trade route.
The quarterly WLS reports calculate up-to-date ship capacity of each alliance, carrier, service and trade route on the 12 trade lanes operating between Asia, Europe, North America and South America.
The reports assess total capacity supply from quarter to quarter, reflecting services added, withdrawn or restructured, and changes in number and size of ships deployed. Pivot tables sent within the report's Excel workbook show capacity and frequency for each service and alliance for the current quarter and previous quarter, as well as percentage change.
Other findings from the July report:
' Asia/North Europe westbound capacity rose 12.2 percent in the second quarter, but Asia/Med capacity grew less than 1 percent.
' Two-way transatlantic allocated capacity actually fell 2.6 percent in the quarter.
' Allocated capacity from Asia to South America rose 12.7 percent, albeit on less than 20 percent of the capacity provided from Asia to North America or Europe.
' The increase was even higher from South America to Asia, at 14.1 percent.
' Carriers provided 20 percent more capacity at the end of June on the South America-to-Asia leg than on the Asia-to-South America leg.
' Transpacific all-water capacity rose 2.5 percent in the second quarter, with transpacific carriers providing nearly four TEUs of allocated capacity to West Coast North America for each TEU to East Coast North America.
' U.S. export capacity to Asia rose 10.4 percent, higher than the head-haul growth.
The report is available here. ' Eric Johnson
