384 services are now blanked globally due to the Coronavirus
384 services are now blanked due to the pandemic, said Lars Jensen from SeaIntelligence in his LinkedIn account, this is an increase from 212 last week, but it is partly due to more blank sailings and partly a change in methodology.
He states that there are 83 new announcements of blank sailings since last week. And the number also includes the 89 blank sailings which took place during the outbreak in China before it became a global pandemic.
Hence the number now includes the full extend of the pandemic – both the Chinese outbreak and the following global spread. On Asia-Europe and Transpacific combined the carriers have now removed 3 million TEU of capacity – this is 2.4 times more that the normal removal seen during Chinese New Year.
This also indicates a global demand shortfall across all trades of 6.4 million TEU on the basis of sailings that are already blanked.
Last Week
One week ago Lars reported that 212 services were cancelled globally due to the pandemic, with a worst case loss of 23 Bn USD. Especially the next few weeks will see large capacity reductions, with Asia-Europe being most impacted thus far with some 30% capacity reduction over a 3-4 week period, mentioned.
