News
Drewry expects 2024 to be the second highest year on record for dry freight container manufacturing, driven by the all-time high quarterly production in the second quarter (April-June), followed by July’s output of dry freight and reefer containers exceeding 850,000 TEUs from factories in China. Manufacturers are reporting full orderbooks until mid-October.
The provision for containers in numbers and at locations where they are required has become a challenge because of the strong exports from Asia, congestion at large container transshipment hubs and declining container productivity due to the extended voyage caused by the Red Sea crisis.
In particular, the availability of 40-foot high-cube containers, which are the workhorses of the industry, has become increasingly tight with more units needed to move the same volume of cargo. In the first seven months, 1.4 million containers were delivered, up from just 125,000 units in the same period of 2023, indicating a tenfold surge year on year.
The production of reefer containers also increased in the second quarter, but the numbers were still in the range that has been seen over the last several quarters. The tonnage of reefer cargo on routes that would normally include the Red Sea fell by more than 5% year on year in 2023, well before the start of the recent supply chain issues. A similar trend was seen in the wider market with a 0.7% decrease in global seaborne reefer trade, following a 1.5% decline in 2022 and signaling the relative weakness of the sector.
