News / Financial odds still appear to be stacked against box shipping's major players

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Credit rating agency Moody’s has characterised container shipping’s problem as a combination of “high cyclicality”, exacerbated by “fierce competition between the main players” and “high reliance on short-term contracts”. Together, these factors conspire to prevent the sector achieving any form of sustainable profitability.

These concerns were underlined on Friday, when OOCL– one of container shipping’s most carefully run businesses – announced its third-quarter 2013 operational update, which stated that revenues across its four major tradelanes declined by 10% against Q3 2012.

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