Five weeks ago Sea-Intelligence analysed the scheduled East/West capacity for the 4-week 2023 Chinese New Year (CNY) period, and found the 2023 CNY capacity to be higher than past years, despite the slowdown in demand.
Accorging to Sea-Intelligence, carriers were able to bring scheduled capacity down by -18%, meaning that if the actual deployment stays like this, supply on Asia-North America West Coast across CNY 2023 would be in line with the pre-pandemic baseline. This was brought about by an increase in blank sailings from 7.6% to 35.8%. There was a similar trend on Asia-North America East Coast and Asia-North Europe, with the scheduled 4-week CNY capacity deployment decreasing by -11% and -6%, respectively, bringing both closer to the pre-pandemic baseline. The increase in blank sailings was also substantial in both cases.
On both Asia-North America East Coast and Asia-North Europe, new, higher level was more or less reached by Week. For Asia-North America West Coast this level was reached in increments. This is an indication that perhaps the carriers are not as decisive on the Asia-North America trade lane than on the other two.
