DHL: By the end of 2021, global container ship orders accounted for 9.8% of the world's existing fleet, about 6.5% higher than a year ago

The head of DHL's freight division believes that port congestion should ease next year as new container ships are delivered and shipper demand falls from the peak of the epidemic, but this will still not be enough to restore global supply chain flows to pre-epidemic levels. Tim Scharwath, CEO of DHL Global Forwarding, said in an interview:

“There will be some relief in 2023, but we won’t be back to 2019. I don’t think we’ll go back to a situation where there’s excess capacity and freight rates are very low. Infrastructure, especially in the U.S., is not going to get better overnight because it takes a long time to build infrastructure.”

Scharwath warned that congestion at major European ports such as Hamburg and Rotterdam was worsening as more ships arrived from Asia, while a strike by South Korean truckers would put pressure on supply chains.

“No matter where you put pressure on something in the world, it has an impact on the rest of the supply chain,” he said. “Five years ago, the situation in South Korea had no impact. Now it does.”

Container lines have been ordering new ships during the pandemic as port bottlenecks pushed freight rates to historic highs, helping them post record profits after years of losses.

Data shows that as of the end of 2021, global container ship orders accounted for 9.8% of the world's existing fleet, about 6.5 percentage points higher than a year ago.

From Global Market Report