The bar chart clearly shows how much the container shipping companies were ailing until the corona pandemic broke out. In 2021 and 2022, the container shipping companies' profits reached dizzying heights; Maersk's profits even went through the roof in the bar chart created by Alphaliner. In those years, container shipping lines could charge as much as $15,000 per container for a shipment.

Rates of $5,000 per container

In 2023, the market normalised, although shipping lines still fared better than before the corona pandemic. And in the current year, container shipping lines then benefited again from an international calamity, the Red Sea crisis this time, although it certainly did not get as generous as in the corona years. Container rates this time ran up to roughly $5,000 per container in the peak season, last July.

Alphaliner bases the 'podium spot' for 2024 as a profitable year for container shipping companies on the first nine months. The net profits of the largest container shipping lines added up over those first three quarters already yielded a higher amount than in complete 2020 and 2023, the only other years that Alphaliner believes can even somewhat match 2024 outside the Covid years.

Sailing around the Cape of Good Hope

The gains are particularly striking, the data firm analyses, because container shipping companies had to incur substantially higher costs as they diverted en masse via the Cape of Good Hope. They did so to avoid Houthi attacks near Yemen (on the normal, much shorter Red Sea-Suez Canal route). Compared to last year, the shipping lines had nearly 20% more tonne miles (weight carried divided by distance travelled) as a result, according to Alphaliner. It led to higher costs in container handling and fuel consumption in particular, the data firm said, citing as an example Maersk's bunker costs, which increased by 23% in the first nine months compared to the same period last year.

The emission allowances that shipping companies have had to pay under the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) since this year are a "smaller" additional cost, according to Alphaliner, with in Maersk's case, for example, just under $130m so far this year.

Source: NT