Charter market revival

Container market After a slow start into the year, the containership charter market finally picked up at the end of March. Especially the larger segments (1,700/2,500 teu) benefitted from the positive global trend.

High reefer vessels of 2,500 teu continued to fare relatively well, as they had already in 2016. In late March a number of factors also caused charter rates for standard 2,500 teu ships to rise substantially from mid US$ 5,000 to over US$ 9,000 in the Atlantic trading area. In sync with the increasing earnings, period flexibility also decreased after several ships had to accept durations of, for example, two to 12 months.

During the last six months over 20 ships of 2,500 teu had been scrapped, and another 10 or so were sold to Asian operators, thus removing them from the charter market. In addition to the declining supply side, extra demand was created by Spanish port strikes and traditional seasonal tonnage demand.

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