Demand for container shipping on the China-Mexico maritime route is opening up opportunities for medium-range shipping lines , a market traditionally served by large companies in the sector.

Information obtained by T21 indicates that at least a group of seven companies would be preparing a joint service to serve this route.

These are SeaLead Shipping , KMTC , Sinokor Merchant Marine , TS Lines , Regional Container L. (RCL) , Emirates Shipping Line and Sinotrans Container Lines (Sinolines) , which would have container ships with a capacity of around three thousand 20-foot containers (TEU) .

The service would depart from ports such as Shanghai, Qingdao in China, and Pusan ​​in South Korea, to reach the ports of Manzanillo and Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico.

The commercial-maritime connection between the Asian region and Mexico is going full steam ahead. The ports of the Mexican Pacific received a total of 2,751,463 TEU of imports last year, 11.9% more than a year earlier, according to data from the port authority.

Of these, 90.7% entered the country through the ports of Manzanillo (with 1,698,437 TEU) and Lázaro Cárdenas (with 797,210 TEU).

The total fleet of these seven shipping companies is 339 ships and they have 874,414 TEU, according to information from Alphaliner . These companies regularly offer services between countries in Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and, in some cases, even the United States.  

Maritime capacity

The arrival of these new shipping lines comes at a time when the average short-term ocean freight price on the China-Mexico-west coast of Latin America trade route  was below three thousand dollars per 40-foot container (FEU) at the beginning of this year.

According to the EAX index of  Eternity Group Mexico , freight averaged a cost of  two thousand 274 dollars per FEU  during January 2025, 25.25% below the average of a month earlier.

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The cost of maritime freight that is being negotiated for shipments between Asia and Mexico next September is being driven upward by a strategy of blank sailings by shipping lines.

According to Nicolás Portenza, president of Eternity Group México , the rate reached six thousand dollars per container , after freight had eased pressure on the cost of transporting cargo on this maritime route starting in the second quarter of this year.

“It wasn’t a coincidence. The maritime lines decide four weeks before the Golden Week in China (from October 1 to 7), to reduce capacity and apply a strong GRI (General Rate Increase) of two thousand dollars per container as of September 1,” Portenza told through a post on LinkedIn.

He himself shared the complete photo of the blank sailings already announced by the different maritime lines . “Only in the first week of implementation of the new GRI, three ships were “laundered” for an approximate impact of 20 thousand TEUs (20-foot containers) in a period of increased demand due to the end-of-year holiday season and the closure. from Chinese factories in October,” he indicated.

Likewise, he stated that this situation generates cargo backlog (reservation) at origin and a cascading effect of weekly “rolls”, also considerably increasing transit times and the instability of services (surprise transfers).

Mexican ports located in the Pacific have experienced an upward trend in terms of receiving import containers, mainly from the Asian continent.

The country’s port authority states in its statistics report that, in the first half of this year, these ports have received one million 301 thousand 584 20-foot containers (TEU) in import service , 14% above what was registered in the same period of 2023.

Golden Week

On the other hand, RH Shipping & Chartering explained the importance of Golden Week for maritime trade and the forecasts that importers should take into account:

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