The order book of worldwide container shipping has more than tripled in a year and a half to 6.5 million TEU of new transport capacity. That corresponds to 26% of the current capacity. According to the international shipowners’ association Bimco, the order book for container shipping has not been this large in the past fifteen years. According to analyst Niels Rasmussen, 6.2 million TEU, the lion’s share of the total order book, will be shipped before 2025.

In October 2020, the order book still contained only two million TEU. A wave of orders started in the second half of that year, when it became clear that the corona pandemic was leading to a sharp increase in demand for container transport. This increased further last year, partly thanks to the enormous profits of the container carriers.

Issues with Congestion

Rasmussen expects that the effective capacity of the current container fleet will increase by about two million TEU in the coming years, even without new construction. “The congestion problems that still exist will eventually be resolved,” he says. He therefore assumes that the total supply of transmission capacity will grow by about eight million TEU until 2025. That is about a third of the current capacity.