The Mexican Pacific ports of Lazaro Cardenas and Manzanillo are experiencing delays of up to five days as they face operational challenges caused by bigger ships calling the gateways.

“A couple of years ago, the biggest ship arriving in Mexico was about 10,000 TEUs,”said Nicolas Portenza, president of Eternity International Freight Forwarder México. “Now you have Maersk, MSC [Mediterranean Shipping Company] and CMA CGM arriving with vessels between 12,000 TEUs and 16,000 TEUs to a port that is the same size.”

As such, sources say carriers had difficulty in March filling vessels, many of which were brought on recently due to manufacturing growth in Latin America. Freight forwarders say they are seeing utilization near 50% as seasonally low demand combined with tariff uncertainties drive down demand on the Asia-Mexico lane. But despite the bearish market signals, some sources expect a turnaround soon.

“I think it will recover during April and May,”Portenza told the Journal of Commerce.“Demand is not weak per se, it's just not keeping up with the [vessel] supply.”

Still, industry sources are paying attention to talk of even more capacity to come serving Central America and the West Coast of South America (WCSA).

“There is news of new services to Mexico and also to WCSA,”said a forwarder source with cargo on the lane.“It will be a bloodbath if they come.”

Decreasing blank sailings

Meanwhile, the Asia to West Coast South America and Central America lane is positioned for fewer blanks in April as forwarders report green shoots of demand, although it may not be enough to offset the increased vessel sizes and excess capacity.

eeSea as of Monday reports that no blanks are forecast on the lane in April, down from 12 blank sailings in March that accounted for about 12.2% of the total capacity for WCSA imports from Asia. March marked the highest number of blank sailings observed on the trade since September, a likely response to several capacity injections on the lane in the past several months.

According to Eternity International, the Asia to Mexico lane had a total of five blank sailings spread among four carriers in March, although that is expected to drop to three blanks in April, all from Cosco.

Spot rates from Asia to WCSA were pegged at $1,400 per FEU as of Monday, down 46.1% from the first week of January and lower by the same amount year over year, according to Platts, a sister company of the Journal of Commerce within S&P Global.