The first big event of the year will be the February rollout of the world’s first fully automated container terminal in Rotterdam, which threatens to unleash a rate war across the Le Havre-Hamburg range as carriers leverage the added capacity to beat down handling charges.
The leading hubs, mainly in Northwest Europe, also will have to deal with the accelerating influx of giant vessels capable of carrying 19,000 20-foot-equivalent units that regularly will load and unload as many as 7,000 containers on a single call.