Box shipping industry could sail into a downturn in 2026, watchers say

[SINGAPORE] The box shipping industry may experience a cyclical downturn in the new year as capacity is expected to outstrip demand, with supply-demand dynamics being aggravated by vessels’ return to the Suez Canal.

Lars Jensen, chief executive officer of Vespucci Maritime, said the conclusion of a downturn from looking at global supply and demand forecasts is pretty self-evident – the industry is heading into a “fairly normal” cyclical downturn. Not a crash, in other words.

“To me, a crash is what we saw during the financial crisis, 2008 to 2009, for example. That is not what we’re heading into, we are heading into overcapacity like we did in 2015 to 2016,” he elaborated in a panel discussion.