Ports trail ship development

And while Ocean Shipping Consultants’ Andrew Penfold believes that the industry might experience a “slight pause” in ship size growth, he anticipates that ports will face a new round of containership-related pressures in the near future.

“The force of deploying these vessels has run ahead of finding an optimum solution for handling these vessels,” he noted, speaking at TOC Europe in Rotterdam.

Drewry’s Neil Davidson said that he was “not really brave enough” to say that container ship growth would stop at 21,000 teu. “The pressure to go bigger will still be there, but we seem to have reached a hesitation because of length constraints.”

Mr Penfold added that alliances will likely develop further when freight rates recover, which will further challenge ports. “We should look at these as defensive and by no means long term partnerships,” he said.

Demand peaks created by the combination of alliances and mega ships are a particular cause for concern: “The amount of port time that these ships create is highly significant and leading to extraordinary numbers that terminals need to deal with,” said Mr Davidson.

“The implications for ports are higher terminal Capex and Opex. The yard is really feeling the pressure of peaks and there’s much more rapid obsolescence of terminal capacity.”