Bigger is not necessarily better

With the ever greater inflow of mega-ships in the global fleet it seems that the cost savings introduced by these behemoths have bottomed out as savings are decreasing and might not even be realised, according to a study about the impact of mega-ships on maritime transport.

The study was published at the beginning of June, 2015 by the International Transport Forum (ITF) at the OECD, an intergovernmental organisation with 54 member countries, acting as a strategic think tank with the objective of helping shape the transport policy agenda on a global level.

Doubling the maximum container ship size over the last decade has reduced total vessel costs per transported container by roughly a third. However, these cost savings are decreasing with size; the cost savings of the newest generation of containerships are four to six times smaller than the savings from the previous round of upsizing, the study shows.