and connections for shipping lines travelling long shipping distances, 2) route efficiencies by shipping networks to optimize operating costs, 3) increased global trade and long-distance relations between countries.
In addition to the eleven trends shown above, new habits post COVID-19 pandemic also affected the maritime trade routes during early 2021. The recovery phase was seen in the activities at ports that although demonstrating resilience to consumer demand and global supply chains, due to an imbalance in trading, and uneven economic growth in the world also caused a shortage of containers in the East.
UNPRECEDENTED SHORTAGE OF CONTAINERS
The Global shipping container shortage report: the story so far, Ship Technology, April 2021, stated that currently, there was a shortage of empty containers in most of the regions in eastern countries such as China, where China is one of the countries that carries out the largest exports to other countries, especially in the western region. The underlying causes of this shortfall were complex, including imbalanced capacity management by operators at the start of the crisis and delays related to the ongoing COVID-19 at transport connection points including ports. This happened in the early phase of the lockdown where empty containers could not return to China or were allowed to accumulate in destination countries, as well as changes in trading patterns and an increase in demand in early 2021, which saw ships in such a hurry to return being forced to return home leaving empty containers (in the report “No relief: Global container shortage likely to last until 2022”, American Shipper, April 2021).
GLOBAL MARITIME TRADE
Asia, Europe and North America are the focus with the highest volume of global trade. The largest regional route trade was in Asia with a volume of 44.5 million TEUs in 2019. The two main international trade routes were Far East-Europe with a volume of 24.5 million TEU and Far East-North America with a volume of 23.7 million TEU, as shown in figure 3.7. The high volume of container trade to and from the Far East was caused by China’s joining the WTO in 2001, causing a relocation of production centers from developed countries to China.
