New services and reinstated blanked sailings boost transpacific capacity
The Gemini Cooperation has introduced an additional transpacific service as a rush of demand and ...
© Vladimir Serebryanskiy
By Mike Wackett
The world’s largest containership lessor says it has had no approaches from ocean carrier customers to renegotiate charter rates and is confident its contracted revenue of $6bn is secure.
Questioned during a Q4 and 2015 results teleconference, Seaspan Corporation chairman and chief executive Gerry Wang confirmed its business ...
Comment on this article
John
March 10, 2016 at 4:09 pmI think vessel lessors need to look at the long term picture. The idle fleet size is increasing, as each day passes they become closer to the end of charter agreements, no one will want to renew their charter agreements at higher rates than they are paying now plus with the decrease in steel prices, buying a new ship now is a lot cheaper than it was 5-10 years ago. Somebody somewhere is going to end up with vessels they paid too much for that aren’t worth a lot as scrap and that nobody wants to charter. As the ships get cheaper, they become more attractive for the lines to buy rather than charter. Other lessors are struggling so they will be offering cheap deals to the market.
Sooner or later the shipping lines will reduce capacity which means they need less ships.
At the moment, I wouldn’t describe the future as robust.
Mike Wackett
March 11, 2016 at 1:07 pmHi John,
Much hinges on the sacrosanct nature of a charter party.
Seaspan and other non-operating owners would argue that carriers should have realised the importance of the contract before putting their signature to the charter party.
In this respect Seaspan’s business model is watertight and could be described as ‘robust’.
We will have to see what happens with the HMM situation, but if the flood gates were to open…….