Orders for 9-vessel batches signal slow steaming here to stay

An executive with French liner carrier CMA CGM has suggested that slow steaming as a way to cut fuel costs is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

In an interview in the September issue of Lloyd's Register Container Ship Focus, Nicolas Sartini, CMA CGM's director for the Asia/Europe trades, said running vessels more slowly could save owners up to $70,000 per day.

In certain cases, the difference in daily bunker consumption can reach up to 100 tons, at $700 per ton, he said.

Looking forward, an interesting development is that carriers have begun to order vessels in batches of nine instead of eight. Traditionally a string between Asia and Europe required eight vessels, but with slow steaming an extra vessel is required. Sartini admitted that CMA CGM had placed orders for its latest ships before the fuel crisis hit, meaning its orders were made for batches of eight ships.

Interestingly the most recent orders have now been made on the basis of nine ships, he said. This is a genuine sign that this is the only viable economical way forward. A recent order made by UASC was made for nine 13,000-TEU ships. This is probably the first concrete example of this new tendency.

Those carriers lacking a ninth vessel have turned internally to their own fleet, or to those within carrier alliances.

At CMA CGM, we used the MOL Creation last year in the FAL1 service as a ninth vessel and taking this vessel as a VSA, he said. We now do the same with Hyundai Brave, also in the FAL1. Some lines have been unable or unwilling to fix the ninth vessel and have simply decided to have a blank sailing every nine weeks.