News / Intra-Asia services suffering as smaller box ships are diverted to long-haul trades

Photo: VesselFinder.

The cascading of smaller box ships to more-lucrative long-haul lanes has created a shortage of vessels for intra-Asia trades.

A meeting of representatives of the Korea Shipowners Association, Korea International Trade Association and domestic feeder operators, such as Sinokor, Namsung and Pan Ocean, heard that the lack of tonnage was giving exporters a hard time, as it had driven intra-Asia rates to rise fourfold from last year.

The Shanghai Containerised Freight Index showed that, on 12 ...