Shipping alliance 2M led the way, as they made a full temporary withdrawal of the AE2/Swan and AE20/Dragon services on the Asia-Europe trade for all of the second quarter. Albeit with the caveat that if demand picks up earlier than expected they might also resume service earlier.

2M's capacity withdrawal equals a 21 per cent capacity reduction on the trade. It should be expected that the move will trigger a rapid escalation in the amount of void sailings both by other shipping lines as well as in other trade lanes.

All in all, both shippers and carriers are entering a period where significant amount of time and effort needs to go into exception handling, the company highlighted in a statement.

When shippers see a sharp decline in demand for their goods, they naturally have fewer containers to ship, and hence have no choice but to book significantly less cargo than originally planned. When carriers see such a sharp drop in booking activity, they have no choice but to cancel sailings.

Cancelled sailings leads to a need to re-arrange supply chains. But given the high uncertainty in the world markets, as no-one knows exactly how long this pandemic will last, more new arrangements will likely be ad-hoc.

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