the Golden Week holiday to mitigate the erosion of rates during the slack winter months, ahead of the next demand upswing that precedes the Chinese New Year holiday in February.
However, it is clear that shipping lines will look this year to bridge that period with network adjustments – whether that is in the form of void sailings, sliding to regain schedules or dry-docking ships.
Until now, carriers have postponed all non-essential dry-docking of their own vessels and persuaded the owners of their chartered ships to do likewise, in order to deploy as much tonnage as possible and take advantage of the highly elevated rates. But eventually the special surveys and repairs and so on will need to be carried out.
Dry-docking ships will give the carriers another capacity tool to deploy, which would leave them open to less criticism from shippers and, not least, the attention of regulators, than they would expect after blanking sailings.
