According to Alphaliner, the largest growth in the size of boxships over the past five years is to be found on shipping links to and from Africa. It reports a 17.5% increase in the size of vessels used on these routes.
A double-digit growth, of 17%, was also recorded on routes between the Far East and North America, where ships reached an average capacity of 9,622 TEUs per unit.
However, the trade lane still employing the largest ships remains the one between Asia and Europe. With the exception of two 19,400 TEU MSC megamax ships currently deployed on the 2M China-California “TP2 / Jaguar” service and four megamax ships operated by COSCO SHIPPING Lines, which are used in the trade lane between the Far East and the Middle East, all other megamax ships (164 in all) are currently deployed on this link with an average capacity of almost 15,000 TEU per unit.
However, despite many 24,000 TEU ships being delivered over the last few months, the average size of vessels on this trade route has only grown by 6.1% since 2018, well below the average growth of the total world fleet (11.4%).
Translation by Giles Foster
