Taiwanese container carrier has decided to completely withdraw from the Asia-Europe routes due to the bad market conditions, overcapacity of the market and low spot rates.
This decision will favour the Wan Hai services with a bigger capacity on their other routes in Asia, USA and Latin America. The Taiwanese operator believes that there are too many ships with a 10,000 teu and more, operating in the European market and the outlook of the present conditions remains grim.
Moreover, the alliances of the biggest shipping lines are hardly dumping the freight rates and seriously discourage the smaller carriers. The decrease in spot rates continue and shipping Wan Hai had their eight unsuccessful attempt to raise the rates on Asia-Europe routes and they dropped with 25% during the previous week.
Wan Hai stated its Q2 profit expectations will be affected by the falling shipping rate in the intra-Asia trades. The container carrier is primarily an intra-Asia player. It tends to focus more on this trade when rates plummet and as a result is one of the most resilient names in the liner trades, remaining in the black while most of its peers get hit on the main east-west.