The Middle East (ME), the Indian Subcontinent (ISC), the Far East and Sub-Saharan Africa are the regions where most of the new capacity introduced into the market over the past 12 months has been concentrated, Alphaliner reports.
The market analyst points out how in 2025 global capacity has increased by 7.3% to 33.2 million TEUs .
Of the additional 2.27 million TEUs, 26.75% of the total (607,430 TEUs) was rerouted to services connecting the Middle East and India, 25.34% (575,410 TEU) to services connecting the African continent and 19.87% (451,074 TEU) of the total to the Asia-Europe trade lane.
In a recent report the analysis company had already highlighted the growing appeal of these three trade routes. Between May 2024 and May 2025 capacity was up by 12%, 8.6% and 11.7% respectively.
Six months later, these percentages have continued to rise.
An analysis of the geographical distribution of global capacity shows that capacity deployed in the Middle East and ISC increased by 14.9% between November 2024 and November 2025. Capacity employed in the same period rose by 27.3% on sub-Saharan Africa route and 6.1% on the Asia-Europe one.
The Asia-Europe trade route, however, is still the most popular, with a total capacity of 7.84 million TEUs, 23.6% of the global fleet.
Translation by Giles Foster
