DOWNWARD pressure on spot rates appears to not be supply-driven, but rather driven by a decrease in demand, according to an analysis from Sea-Intelligence.
The maritime analysis group interrogated recent data to see fit here was an extraordinary spike in deployed capacity recently, which could offer an explanation of the decrease.
“For Asia-North America West Coast, the developments are quite curious,” Sea-Intelligence CEO Alan Murphy said.
“Ballooning of capacity could have framed a case for dropping spot rates, but since the annualised growth has been under 5%, it seems as if the current downwards trend is informed by a decrease on the demand side,” he said.
“This in itself should be quite worrying for the carriers, especially as we are headed into the traditional peak season. This is possibly an indication that the market is not as strong as expected.”
Mr Murphy said even on Asia-North Europe, both sets of capacity growth figures have been fluctuating around the 0% mark.
“[This indicates] that the downwards pressure on spot rates is not supply driven and rather because the market is not as strong as initially expected for the 2022 peak season,” he said.
