A better balance between the supply of container ships and the demand for capacity is emerging as ordering of newbuildings has slowed down, noted a senior shipping analyst.

"The supply side is doing whatever it can to improve the fundamental balance of the container shipping market. During the past three months, the fleet has only grown by ten ships net of ships being removed," said Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at BIMCO in Denmark.

"With 79 percent of the newly introduced capacity being ships with a capacity larger than 8,500teu, the trend simply continues as in past years. Fewer but larger ships influence the supply side.

Size is not everything - it is the only thing, but the benefits can only be reaped if the ships can be utilized at a substantial level," he said in a report on the shipping markets.

Late last month, Nils Smedegaard Andersen, CEO of Maersk Line parent company A.P. Moller-Maersk, noted in a conference call that the overall tonnage situation is not bad as the number of vessels in layup is low at the moment. Very large newbuildings keep on to entering service, but Andersen noted that these vessels need to spend more time in port to handle cargo than their smaller predecessors, which means that the effective increase in capacity is not as significant as some observers have indicated.

Sand noted that the container ship orderbook is now down to just 426 units, a number not seen since 2003 - the difference, however, is that this time the orderbook stands at 3.27 million teu, 50 percent bigger than 12 years ago. The total fleet currently stands at 18.4 million teu. "BIMCO estimates a total delivery during 2015 just short of 1.5 million teu and a demolition activity below the bullish level of 2014; the fleet growth rate is on course for 6.5 percent," Sand concluded.