Short Sea Market Analysis - November 2025

Each month, Sea3R founder and director Peter Molloy talks to Short Sea News, providing insights into the current state of affairs within the European gearless coaster fleet. For November he dives into vessel utilisation.

One of the features we analyse in our reporting of the European gearless coaster fleet of 3000, 5000, 6500 and 8500 dwt vessels, is utilisation by vessel allocation. We consider utilisation from the perspective of vessels assigned to the parts of our geofence in which they spend the majority of their time. Our geofence consists of Baltic Northwest Europe, the Western Mediterranean and the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

This helps us to build a picture of the state of the market, detailing how much demand there is for vessels in the different areas and, increasingly of interest as environmental regulations come into force, the level of demand for newer, more efficient tonnage.

Broadly speaking, what we have observed during 2025 are relatively stable levels of utilisation. There has been a slightly downward trend in most vessel categories, and again generally speaking, this has been most pronounced in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea region.

However, given that we have seen high levels of utilisation across the different areas in recent years, we might expect to see some slight reductions. This is particularly the case when we consider that, with the exception of the smallest vessel size we analyse, there has been net fleet growth. This is the result, both of newbuilds entering the market, and of vessels moving into our geofence. In any case, there is every indication that the additional capacity these vessels represent is largely being absorbed.

What we do see is higher levels of utilisation for younger and mid-life vessels. While older vessels also continue to see reasonable levels of utilisation, this is an indication that, when there is availability, there is greater demand for younger vessels.

It will be interesting to see, in the coming years, if this tendency will provide additional stimulus for fleet renewal. Certainly, in the case of the 3600-dwt vessel category, there are signs that fleet renewal is underway, with a significant increase in vessel demolitions since our last reporting period.

When it comes to increased utilisation of younger tonnage, the 8500 dwt vessels are the exception to the rule. However, when we consider that the majority of these vessels are Russian-built and operated, the reason for this is clear – there is simply a shortage of younger tonnage on the open market currently as a result of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

And, while we do certainly see a slight decline in utilisation for these larger vessels over the period, there are two further factors at play here. One is simply the low number of vessels in operation. This is bound to result in more pronounced fluctuation when viewed on a graph.

The second, is that this category of vessel experienced historic highs of utilisation during 2020-2021. This was the result of a shortage of container vessels on the market. With their large capacity, and with many featuring box-shaped holds, these vessels were able to take full advantage of the situation and act as stand-ins for the container ships. With this situation now resolved, a drop in demand is only to be expected.

In conclusion, any drops in utilisation in recent months have been very slight and can usually be explained by either seasonal fluctuation or an increase in net tonnage. As such, they do not signal any negative trends in the market.