Until recently, these were caused by the sharply reduced port activity in China as factories across the country closed in the wake of the lockdown. In recent weeks, port operations in China turned back to normal after factories reopened, and truck drivers and dock workers resumed their activities.
The current wave of announced blank sailings is caused by the sharp decline in demand from Europe as virtually all European countries have implemented full or partial lockdown measures. Some sources report that on the Europe – Far East trade on average a quarter of the sailings is blanked in the coming six weeks or so.
The graph shows the implication of a blanked sailing on the missed TEU volume in a typical European port of call. Depending on the ship size used and the share of containers transhipped, one blanked sailing on the Far East trade results in a throughput decrease in the port of call of between 8,000 and 18,000 TEU.
The accumulated effect at a port level is obviously much larger if one considers several months of reduced activity and if we take into account that major European container hubs might be confronted with several blanked sailings per week.
