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A panel of senior executives at Breakbulk Europe in Rotterdam warned on 16 of June that the multipurpose and breakbulk vessel market is operating with almost no spare capacity, as geopolitical disruptions and persistent port infrastructure shortfalls combine to tighten supply across every major trade lane.
The session, moderated by Peter Molloy, managing director at Sea3R and senior associate at Drewry Maritime Research, drew a candid picture of an industry stretched thin by converging pressures it cannot fully control.
Fleet Utilisation at the Edge
Axel van Pul, regional head of project cargo for Europe and Mediterranean at MSC, told delegates that current data indicate less than 1% of the container fleet is sitting idle. “Basically everything is sailing,” he said, attributing the pressure to ongoing disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, the Bab el Mandeb, and the Suez Canal, each of which is absorbing tonnage that would otherwise be available for deployment elsewhere.
Van Pul acknowledged that a resolution of those conflicts or a reopening of those corridors would shift the picture quickly. “Of course, if everything opens up again, then it will be a different story, but for now we don’t see an overcapacity,” he said.
For project forwarders, however, the problem is less about raw numbers than about fit. Vilasini Krishnan, commercial manager of 4D Consulting, part of deugro Group, argued that the market faces a structural mismatch rather than a simple shortage. “The issue isn’t one of shortage or surplus but of a mismatch,” she said. “Are the right vessels available, both for what’s happening right now in terms of projects, and also what we see happening in the next two to three to five years?”
Port Infrastructure: The Chokepoint Ashore
Both panelists pointed to shoreside constraints as a compounding factor that converts minor delays at sea into prolonged disruptions for cargo owners.
Krishnan flagged the United Kingdom as a specific example, where a pipeline of carbon capture and sustainable aviation fuel projects is generating significant project cargo demand but running into physical limits at quayside. “Not all vessels, particularly those that are able to take these large, modularized cargos, can call at these various ports,” she said.
Van Pul broadened the point to a global level, describing port congestion as a systemic drain on effective ocean capacity. “The lack of port infrastructure, terminal infrastructure and lack of capacity on the land side is still eating into the capacity on the ocean side,” he said. The problem, he added, does not require a major port to materialise. “Even if it’s just a trucking site, you create a bottleneck on the land side, and your ship can’t be handled so it becomes an issue of storage capacity instead of a fleet capacity.”
Maritime Nationalism Enters Newbuild Calculations
The panel also addressed a less discussed but growing dimension of market risk: the emergence of what several speakers described as maritime nationalism, in which political decisions about flags, vessel ownership, and trade access are beginning to influence how operators plan their fleets.
Frank Mueller, regional general manager at AAL, raised the question of whether vessel flag and ownership are becoming commercial variables in the way that price and availability already are. “How much of this geopolitical nationalistic tendency we’re seeing worldwide is actually then filtering into our business, where forwarders may have to consider not only vessel availability and price but also whether this vessel will ultimately be stopped before it even gets to the port because that country, for whatever reason, decided not to accept vessels under that flag or owner anymore?” he asked.
Geopolitical shifts are also reshaping cargo flows. A pullback from renewable energy investment in some regions is being offset by a resurgence of oil and gas project activity, altering the mix of heavy lift and oversized cargo that operators must plan for over a medium to long term horizon.
Collaboration as the Industry’s Best Tool
Despite the weight of structural constraints on the table, the overarching message from panelists was one of measured confidence in the industry’s capacity to adapt, as it has done consistently since the disruptions of the Covid period.
Ulrich Ulrichs, CEO of BBC Chartering, called for deeper and earlier engagement among all parties in the project supply chain. Increased cooperation and discussion between all stakeholders earlier in the planning process, he argued, would improve outcomes for everyone, regardless of how geopolitical and market conditions evolve.
