14 April 2020
According to latest figures from Alphaliner the COVID19 outbreak and resulting quarantine measures have led to a record number of service withdrawals and blank sailings in container liner shipping. The high number of service withdrawals and blank sailings that carriers have announced for the coming weeks is expected to push the inactive containership fleet capacity to more than 3 million TEUs, surpassing the previous high of 2.46 million TEUs recorded in early March, which represented 10.6% of the global container fleet. During the 2009 economic crisis, 1.52 million TEUs capacity was cancelled, which represented 11.7% of the global fleet then.