Container Market Faces Tougher 2027 Conditions
Container xChange co-founder Christian Roeloffs expects container market conditions to be more challenging next year than in 2026.
Updated on Nov. 13, 2026 in Transportation
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Christian Roeloffs, co-founder and CEO of Hamburg-based Container xChange, expects container market conditions to be more challenging in 2027 than in 2026. Second-hand prices for WWT dry freight standard containers in Chicago fell 21% year-on-year.
Why it matters
Lessors' utilisation averaged 88% this year, but rising off-hires and returning shipping lines are expected to ease pressure on the market. Second-hand container prices are projected to ease further as the spread between new and used sale prices widens.
Drewry estimates the end-of-2026 container retirement pool at 2.31 million TEU, with close to 98% replaced by newbuilds, and expects it to reach 2.47 million TEU in 2027 and 3.69 million TEU in 2028. Projected new deliveries would add at least 9% more slots to the fleet, against expected ship demand growth of only 0.5% to 2.5%.
The players
Container xChange
Container xChange is a Hamburg-based online platform for trading and leasing shipping containers, serving lessors and operators worldwide.
Christian Roeloffs
Christian Roeloffs is the co-founder and CEO of Container xChange, and a prominent commentator on container trading and leasing markets.
Drewry
Drewry is a London-based shipping consultancy that publishes widely cited estimates of container fleet, retirement and demand trends.
The details
Roeloffs' outlook was discussed at Intermodal Europe 2026 in a session titled "Container Trading & Leasing; positioning for profitability in a normalising market." Typical secondary-market containers are 12 to 16 years old, and most shipping lines are returning to Suez Canal transits, releasing capacity previously absorbed by Cape of Good Hope routings.
Timeline
2026: Lessors' utilisation averaged 88% and the Hormuz Strait is expected to remain closed all year.
March to September 2026: Off-hires are expected to rise, pushing lessors' utilisation rates down.
2027: Market conditions are expected to be more challenging than in 2026.
Market Landscape
Drewry's retirement-pool estimates project the container pool rising from 2.31 million TEU at the end of 2026 to 3.69 million TEU in 2028, with close to 98% of retirements replaced by newbuilds. That replacement pattern is what Roeloffs points to as the driver of a widening gap between new and second-hand container prices.
Shippers and businesses that rely on container freight may see changes in leasing costs and equipment availability as utilisation falls and second-hand prices ease. Buyers of used containers could find more favorable pricing in 2027 if the projected widening of the new-versus-used spread materializes.
The takeaway
Companies planning container purchases or leases should track utilisation rates and retirement-pool figures, since these indicators signal how quickly the market is loosening. Monitoring the spread between new and second-hand prices can help inform whether buying new or used offers better value.
Further reading
For broader context on shipping routes and capacity, explore our Transportation coverage.
Source note: This article includes information reported by WorldCargo News.
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