Xeneta’s CEI was launched last year to provide companies with the data they need to make informed decisions for their cargoes, says an article published on Riviera.
Calculating emissions footprints
Data is based on actual cargo load from real sailings, real-time AIS data and individual vessel specifications. The index covers 13 main routes for liners, tracking movements and calculating emissions footprints. A baseline of 100 is used to score carriers in relation to the trade lane average at the start of 2018.
Trade routes
The trade routes covered under the CEI are:
Far East–Mediterranean, Far East-North Europe, Far East-South America East Coast, Far East-US East Coast, Far East-US West Coast, Mediterranean-Far East, Mediterranean-US East Coast, North Europe-Far East, North Europe-South America East Coast, North Europe-US East Coast, US East Coast–Mediterranean, US East Coast-North Europe and US West Coast-Far East.
Weak market impacted
As a whole, the segment posted mixed results, with some gains offset by poor performances, as the weak market impacted on filling factors, which in turn decreased overall efficiency.
Overall, Xeneta shipping analyst Emily Stausbøll believes the industry is moving in the right direction, but the varying scores show progress is far from straightforward.
Market factors affect scores
“There’s only one trade that has a higher CEI for Q4 2022 than Q1 2018, and that’s the US East Coast to North Europe (a CEI of 108),” she said.
“However, we are seeing some quarter-on-quarter setbacks – such as on trades out of the Far East, where the CEI scores worsened (increased) on four out of the five main trades. To uncover why, we need to consider overall market conditions.”
Impacting upon volumes
Ms Stausbøll attributed some of this to the present market situation.
“Weak fundamentals have hit demand, impacting upon volumes. Out of the Far East, we’ve seen filling factors fall away by 4.5 percentage points. However, there’s been no decrease in speed (and hence emissions) to counteract this, so efficiency suffers. As a result, CEIs increased by an average of 6% on these key fronthaul trades. But, and it’s a significant ‘but’, all of these trades are still showing improvements seen in the context of 2018’s performance, with scores improving by between 3.4% and 15.7%.
While there was a drop in speed on most trades in line with the deteriorating market conditions, the best performing lines reduced their speed enough to make up for lower filling factors, while those that didn’t decrease speed enough fared the worst.”
Average speeds recorded
The Far East to US East Coast route made the greatest strides forward against the baseline, scoring 84.3 in Q4 2022. The average vessel size shows a 8.5% increase, while average speeds recorded an 8.9% decrease, down 1.5 knots, and a 0.4 percentage point increase in filling factor.
Xeneta said that although this latter figure is small, it shows carriers have been able to fill the bigger vessels.
Container ship giant
Among individual carriers, container ship giant Yang Ming stood out as the best performer in Q4 2022.
According to Ms Stausbøll, “Yang Ming has shown its commitment and skill when it comes to improving its environmental profile,” she stated.
Performance baseline
The Taiwanese line was the industry’s only major player to score below the CEI performance baseline of 100 across all routes, striking a balance between sailing speed, fill factor and vessel size.
Coast trade corridor
All the other carriers scored over 100 on at least one trade for the quarter, while Yang Ming’s highest was 97.5, between North Europe and the Far East.
Yang Ming also managed a CEI score of 60.85 for the Far East to US East Coast trade corridor.
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Source: Riviera
