News / Late rally too little and too late to offset poor 2025 for OOCL

ID 162891771 | Cargo © Péter Gudella | Dreamstime.com

Fourth-quarter operational results released by Cosco-owned OOCL today showed that despite a late spot freight rate rally in the final months of the year, its total revenues in 2025 were some 10.6% down on 2024.

In unaudited results, the carrier said its total liner revenue last year amounted to just under $8.78bn, compared with the $9.8bn it earned the year before.

The decline came despite a 3.7% increase in volumes over the course of the 12 months, ending the year at 7.87m teu.

However, OOCL increased capacity by 6.1% during 2025, which led to a 1.9% decline in utilisation, compared with 2024, and resulted in average liner revenue per teu falling 13.7% on the year before.

These numbers suggest the Hong Kong-headquartered shipping line marginally lost market share last year – data released this week by Container Trades Statistics (CTS) for the first 11 months of 2025 showed a remarkably strong November, in terms of demand.

“Historically, volumes have softened slightly in November over the past four years, yet 2025 again deviated from the pattern. This reinforces that 2025 was far from a ‘normal’ year for the container shipping industry.

“With this continued momentum, a 5% year-on-year increase for the full year now appears firmly within reach, despite the numerous external pressures faced by the market throughout 2025,” CTS said yesterday.

In that context, OOCL’s Q4 data shows it losing market share on the main transpacific and Asia-Europe trades – liftings on the former in the last three months of 2025 were down 4.2% year on year, while on Asia-Europe volumes increased just 1.3%.

In contrast, Far East-Europe volume data from CTS shows volumes surging 15.5% in November, after a 2.2% year-on-year decline in October, and there is a very high likelihood that its fourth-quarter data, which will be published at the beginning of February, will show a much higher growth rate.

And while OOCL’s largest trade remains the intra-Asia/Australasia corridor, where its growth was in line with the market, it produced a stellar performance on the transatlantic – Q4 volumes grew 8.8% year on year, with full-year carryings of 550,765 teu, 14.9% higher than 2024.

Europe-North America CTS data for October and November show that demand was broadly flat compared to 2024, as the chart below shows:

Source: Container Trades Statistics