Why Is Asia–Europe Capacity at a Record High?
Fewer services. More ships. The Cape is reshaping the supply picture.
Asia–Europe now offers more capacity than ever.
But there are fewer services than last year.
At the same time, more ships are needed to operate the route.
Why?
Because most services are still sailing around the Cape of Good Hope.
This creates an important difference between:
The capacity offered to customers.
And:
The number of ships needed to provide it.
Here are the 4️⃣ signals that matter.
1️⃣ Fewer services are offering more capacity
The North Europe–Far East trade now has 21 services.
A year ago, it had 22.
But annual capacity has still increased by 3% y-o-y.
It has reached a record 13.5m TEU.
The average ship size has also increased slightly.
It rose from 17,200 TEU to 17,300 TEU.
💡 There are fewer services. But the network is offering more capacity overall.
2️⃣ The Cape route needs more ships
Most services are still sailing around the Cape.
This makes each round trip longer.
Each ship takes more time to return.
Carriers therefore need extra ships to keep departures running every week.
The number of ships deployed on the route has increased from 298 to 308.
Average ship size is still below the 18,200 TEU recorded in 2023.
But more ships are now needed to operate the same network.
💡 The Cape is absorbing ships that could otherwise be used elsewhere.