Seatrade-Maritime: Indian Subcontinent container capacity from East Asia falls 14%

Published by Seatrade-Maritime

A decrease of 312,000 teu of deployed capacity compared to a year ago can be attributed to the wider Middle East conflict according to Alphaliner.

In what is an effective 14% year-on-year decline in capacity HMM withdrew from the trade, taking 115,000 teu out of the trade while the liquidation of SeaLead added a further 66,000 teu of offered capacity that has been withdrawn.

“Singapore-based SeaLead Shipping has filed for voluntary liquidation, bringing to a close a near-decade of operations,” commented Alphaliner, who added that the company’s demise followed “aggressive sanctions by the US over its alleged links to Iran.”

In 2025 the US Office of Foreign Assets Control issued sanctions against 16 SeaLead vessels that were ultimately scrapped. New sanctions were issued by the same office against the company and its subsidiaries, including those in India, the UAE and Marshall Islands.

Carriers that held less than 1% of the deployed capacity along with HMM and SeaLead accounted for nearly 90% of the decline in capacity on the trades.

CMA CGM, which has ordered vessels at Indian shipyards and reflagged some of its tonnage to the Indian register, increased its capacity by 70,000 teu, via the launch of the Far East–India ‘TVI’ and Far East–Middle East ‘CIMEX3’.

“These more than offset the downsizing of ‘CIMEX’, where ship sizes fell from around 10,000–16,000 teu to 2,800–5,100 teu. Earlier this year, the ‘CIMEX’ left the OCEAN Alliance network and became a standalone CMA CGM service,” commented Alphaliner.

Meanwhile, Cosco Group suspended the Ocean Alliance’s ‘MEA5’, to which Cosco had contributed six 19,000–21,000 teu ships. However, the carrier added the Far East – ISC ‘SEI1’ and ‘SEI2’ services and increased contributions to three other services.

The world’s largest carrier also increased its offered capacity by increasing the size of its ships, while decreasing the number of vessels from 25 to 18.

MSC upgraded its Far East – ISC ‘Shikra’ service from ships of between 8,000 and 9,500 teu to between 19,000 and 24,000 teu and added Khor Fakkan and Sohar to its rotation.