Reefers boxes continue to overtake reefer ships

Each year reefer box operators are successfully gaining a higher share of the market, according to the Dynamar (2012) Reefer Analysis: ‘Market Structure, Conventional, Containers’, especially in dedicated container services between specific supply and demand areas. Undoubtedly this has partially been achieved by reefer operators offering lower, sometimes much lower, rates than the conventional operators had in the past or were able to, suggests the report.

As a result, the appetite to invest in the specialist conventional reefer sector was removed, resulting in a shrinking fleet. Dynamar states that in the July 2011/2012 period, 94 conventional reefer ships (including dedicated fish carriers) were withdrawn, removing capacity of nearly 36m cu ft (including lost on-deck container space. Scrapping accelerated during the second half of 2012.

In the same period, the container segment increased by26 ships, after scrapping, with the addition of 99,600 reefer plugs, theoretically capable of accommodating more than 199,000 reefer teu, and by more than 230,000 teu, predominantly 40ft high cube reefer containers.