Alphaliner pointed out that the commercially idle tonnage as a proportion of the total cellular container fleet reached an all-time low in the first ten months of the year.
According to the data, on average, 0.7% of the global cellular container fleet was commercially idle from January to October. This is lower than the equivalent 10-month periods in both 2021 and 2022, when COVID-19 was at its peak, with an average of 0.9% idle each year.
This drop occurred as the Red Sea crisis forced carriers to deploy every available ship to service voyage diversions and meet soaring demand.
Alphaliner highlights that the figure is even more striking given the significant growth in the cellular fleet over the past four years.
The fleet has increased from 23.7 million TEU (Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units) in October 2020 to 30.6 million TEU today, marking a rise of nearly 30%.
The average figure for the first ten months of the year indicates that a remarkable 99.3% of the cellular fleet is either commercially employed or out of service for non-commercial reasons, such as repair, maintenance, or conversion.
