With freight rates on key routes weakened day by day, ship owners are become more cautious on new big vessel investment and showing increasing demand for secondary routes. Therefore sources estimates that containership newbuilding market may shift to focus on small ones like 1.000 teu-3,000teu.

Clarkson predicts potential rise for small containership when the European traditional summer vacation ends.

“Whilst the story of year to date has very much been about the larger container ships, we do believe that as the week¡¯s progress post holidays that we will start to see increased activity in the 1-3,000 TEU sector. This sector typically operates an older fleet and with the orderbook currently sitting at well below 10% of the existing fleet, it does seem as if this sector might prove interesting for potential new orders going forward. Whilst it is very clear of the great economies of scale that can be achieved on the long haul routes by the behemoths that have been contracted so far this year, it should also be clearly noted that the feeding off from these large ports to the smaller inter regional trades will require a greater level of these feeder ships. Thus as the Year progresses, it will be interesting to see how this story develops further.”  Clarkson said.

More and more liners follow suit to order mega containerships over-10,000 teu since Maersk contracted 20 boxships of 18,000 teu. According to Clarkson’s database, totally 181 new boxships were ordered from the beginning of this year.