Wan Hai: New fleets will be delivered next year to increase shipping capacity by more than 10%, and European routes will be deployed in 2028

Xie Fulong, General Manager of Wanhai, pointed out that benefiting from the continuous delivery of 12 new ships next year, the total shipping capacity is expected to increase by approximately 100,000 TEU, and the overall shipping volume growth rate is expected to be more than 10%. Wanhai is optimistic about the two-way cargo potential of emerging markets such as India and the West Coast of Latin America. It will further boost the overall revenue scale through fleet replacement and route optimization. Under the diversified ship type layout, it is expected to enter European routes in 2028.

Xie Fulong said that Wanhai currently has 125 self-owned ships with a total shipping capacity of approximately 630,000 TEU. Next year, 11 large container ships of 16,000 TEU and one ship of more than 8,000 TEU are expected to be delivered. The new shipping capacity will total approximately 100,000 TEU, which is expected to drive overall shipping volume growth by more than 10% next year.

Xie Fulong pointed out that the new shipping capacity next year will be mainly large ships, which will mainly be deployed on ocean routes with relatively high freight rates, such as the East-US route. In conjunction with the cooperation mechanism with alliance partners, flexible scheduling will be used to transfer the original 13,000 TEU ships to the West-US, West-South America or India routes. Driven by both transportation volume and freight rates, the overall revenue scale next year is expected to further increase.

As for when to deploy the European route, Xie Fulong said that the European route is more suitable for large ships. In the past, the European route may only have 12 ships, but currently, due to port congestion and other factors, it may be 16 ships. Therefore, it is expected that after the successive delivery of 16,000 TEU large container ships, it is expected to enter the European route as soon as 2028.

In terms of route allocation strategy, Xie Fulong said that Wanhai maintains a balanced resource allocation of one-third each in "open ocean, mid-ocean, and near ocean". Although the cargo volume of the near-ocean route accounts for close to 50%, due to the freight rate structure, the revenue contribution accounts for about 30%. Therefore, the core ship resources will be concentrated on the medium- and long-ocean routes to ensure profit momentum.

In addition, Xie Fulong pointed out that the current container handling capacity of the world's major ports is about 9.5 million TEU, and is expected to expand to 10.2 million to 10.3 million TEU by 2030, an increase of only about 8%. However, during the same period, the total space supply of global shipping companies will increase from 34 million TEU to 44 million TEU, a growth rate of as high as 29%. Since the expansion of fleet size far exceeds the construction of terminal infrastructure, coupled with the trend of larger ships, the berthing operation time of a single ship in the port has been extended from more than 20 hours in the past to about 30 hours. Large ships are highly concentrated in first-level hub ports such as Shanghai and Singapore. It is expected that the challenge of normal port congestion in major international ports will continue in the future.