Empty container moves soar

Empty container moves are soaring, according to new analysis by container research outfit, Sea-Intelligence. 

Growing trade imbalances have led to a situation where the need to reposition empty containers significantly exceeds the growth in paying container volumes, the report points out.

“Essentially, the need to move empty containers on the back-haul trades has grown 2.5 times faster than the need to move full containers on the head-haul trades,” the analysis suggests, meaning that headhaul shippers are having to shoulder an increasing cost of moving empty containers going forward.

Blue Alpha Capital analyst John McCown has also recently looked at container imbalances at three American ports, Los Angeles, Long Beach and New York, something that has clearly accelerated in recent years.

According to McCown’s research the five-year period from 2018 saw a 54% increase in cargo imbalances in the US major ports, compared to the previous 10 years from 2008.

“The economics of having so little revenue generating outbound loads, relative to inbound loads makes a container system less efficient than it would otherwise be. Multiple parties share the resulting economic burden,” McCown noted.