Merchant shipping carried 12.1 billion metric tons of goods in 2024, while the world fleet reached 112,500 commercial vessels with 2.44 billion deadweight tons of capacity on 1 January 2025. The figures show a system expanding in volume and scale while remaining exposed to chokepoints, volatile freight markets, ageing ships and a long fuel-transition challenge.
Contents
- Global seaborne trade
- Fleet size, capacity and age
- Ownership, flags and shipbuilding
- Chokepoints and cargo flows
- Freight rates and transport costs
- Ports and operating performance
- Emissions and fuel transition
Global seaborne trade
World goods loaded for international maritime trade totaled 12.1 billion metric tons in 2024, 3.9% above 2023. The 2023 volume was 11.6 billion tons. Over the longer period from 2000 through 2023, world seaborne trade grew at an average annual rate of 2.7% (UNCTAD Data Insights; Review of Maritime Transport 2025).
Containerized trade was especially strong in 2024, increasing by more than 6%. East Asia–North America eastbound container flows grew 14.7% year over year, while East Asia–Europe westbound trade rose 10.2%. Transatlantic container volumes between Europe and North America increased 5.2% year over year. These are route-specific changes for 2024, not growth rates for all maritime cargo.
UNCTAD projected total maritime trade growth of 0.5% for 2025 and average annual growth of 2% for 2026–2030. Both figures are forecasts. They should be kept separate from the observed 2024 result, particularly because the 2024 UNCTAD trade series introduced a methodology change using official international-merchandise-trade statistics as its main source. Comparisons across that break require caution.
Fleet size, capacity and age
The global fleet reached 112,500 commercial vessels and 2.44 billion deadweight tons of carrying capacity on 1 January 2025. Capacity increased 3.4% over the year to that date. Deadweight tons measure carrying capacity; gross tons measure vessel size, so the two measures should not be treated as interchangeable (Review of Maritime Transport 2025).
Fleet age and ship size vary substantially by ship type. The average world merchant fleet was about 22 years old at the start of 2024. Bulk carriers averaged 11.1 years in 2024, whereas general cargo vessels were the oldest major ship type, averaging 28 years (RMT 2024, Chapter II).
Newer ships also tend to be larger in the categories measured. Bulk carriers aged 0–4 years averaged 83,752 deadweight tons, compared with 50,202 deadweight tons for bulk carriers over 20 years old on 1 January 2024. For container ships, the corresponding averages were 68,382 and 28,566 deadweight tons.
The fleet’s fuel capability shows a similar divide between the ships sailing now and ships being ordered. Only 8% of active world-fleet gross tonnage was designed to run on alternative fuels in May 2025, while alternative-fuel-capable ships represented 53% of gross tonnage on the orderbook. These percentages describe gross tonnage and design capability, not actual alternative-fuel consumption.
Ownership, flags and shipbuilding
The registry structure is concentrated. Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands together accounted for 45.1% of world fleet capacity by deadweight tons on 1 January 2025, although they represented 16.2% of the world vessel count and 36.1% of global fleet value. The top 10 flag States accounted for 76.7% of global fleet capacity by deadweight tons.
Ownership is concentrated in a different group of maritime powers. Greece, China and Japan together controlled more than 40.7% of world fleet capacity by deadweight tons on the same date. Greece alone held 16.4%, while China held 14.4% and Japan 9.9% (Review of Maritime Transport 2025). Flag registration and beneficial ownership therefore describe different parts of the shipping map.
Shipyards delivered 64.775 million gross tons of new merchant vessels in 2023. China produced 51.0% of newbuilt merchant-vessel gross tonnage, the Republic of Korea 28.3% and Japan 15.4%. Container ships accounted for 22.887 million gross tons, or 35.3%, of deliveries; bulk carriers accounted for 19.858 million gross tons, or 30.7% (RMT 2024, Chapter II).
| Measure | Value | Period |
|---|---|---|
| New merchant vessels delivered | 64.775 million gross tons | 2023 |
| Container-ship share of deliveries | 35.3% | 2023 |
| Bulk-carrier share of deliveries | 30.7% | 2023 |
| Global orderbook | 4,870 vessels; 283 million deadweight tons | Start of 2024 |
The global ship orderbook at the start of 2024 contained 4,870 vessels totaling 283 million deadweight tons. Because the delivery figures use gross tons and the orderbook figure uses deadweight tons, they are not directly comparable measures of ship size.
Chokepoints and cargo flows
Several narrow routes carry a large share of global maritime commerce. The Strait of Malacca carried 23.7% of global seaborne trade volume in 2023, followed by the Strait of Hormuz at 11.1%. The Bab al-Mandeb Strait carried 8.7%, the Turkish Straits 3.1% and the Panama Canal 2.16% (RMT 2024, Chapter I).
Hormuz is particularly important for energy cargo. In 2023, 39% of global seaborne crude-oil volume passed through the strait, together with 31% of propane, 20% of oil products and 19% of natural gas. These percentages are cargo-specific flows, not shares of the total volume passing through the strait.
The Suez Canal handled about 10% of global trade volume by tons and 22% of global container traffic by TEU in 2023. Disruption changed route geometry afterward: rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope added approximately 30% to container voyage lengths in 2024. Red Sea ship transits were running 70% below the regular trend in 2025 (UNCTAD Data Insights; Review of Maritime Transport 2025).
Freight rates and transport costs
Freight markets moved sharply across cargoes and routes. The Shanghai Containerized Freight Index averaged 2,496 points in 2024, 149% above its 2023 average. The average Shanghai–South America container spot rate reached $9,026 per TEU from January through July 2024. Over the same period, the average Shanghai–West Africa spot rate rose 137% to $5,563 per TEU (Review of Maritime Transport 2025; Review of maritime transport 2024).
Dry-bulk conditions were more uneven. The Baltic Dry Index averaged 1,398 in 2023, compared with 1,930 in 2022 and a 10-year average of 1,318. It fell to 658 in February 2023 after starting the year at 909, then reached 2,538 in December. Dry-bulk commodity demand grew 4% in 2023, or 5% after adjustment for shipping distance in ton-miles.
The dry-bulk fleet grew 3.1% in 2023 to about 1,004 billion tons of capacity. Average crude-tanker spot earnings rose 21% to $53,541 per day, while average product-tanker spot earnings fell 14% to $32,181 per day. The contrasting tanker results illustrate why a single freight statistic cannot represent all merchant shipping markets (Review of maritime transport 2024).
Ports and operating performance
Container ships made almost 250,000 port calls worldwide in the second half of 2023. Asia handled 63% of global container trade in 2023, and ports in developing economies in Asia handled 60% of world container port traffic in 2024. Global container port throughput increased 6.9% in 2024 (Review of maritime transport 2024; UNCTAD Data Insights).
Waiting times increased between December 2023 and March 2024. Average port waiting time in developed economies rose 23% to 6.4 hours, while the average in developing economies rose 7% to 10.9 hours. Port-call statistics use AIS and port-mapping data, and the cited measures may use median or average time depending on the statistic.
For the top 25 economies, a port call moving more than 6,000 containers averaged 0.6 hours per container in 2023. This measure describes a specific high-volume port-call group and should not be read as a global average for every vessel or port (RMT 2024, Chapter IV).
Emissions and fuel transition
Total shipping emitted 1,056 million tonnes of CO2 in 2018, equal to about 2.89% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Under the IMO’s voyage-based allocation, international shipping emitted 740 million tonnes. Voyage-based international-shipping emissions increased from 701 million tonnes in 2012 to 740 million tonnes in 2018. Total shipping greenhouse-gas emissions rose from 977 million tonnes CO2e to 1,076 million tonnes CO2e over the same period, a 9.6% increase (Fourth Greenhouse Gas Study 2020).
The allocation method matters. Vessel-based international-shipping CO2 emissions rose from 848 million tonnes in 2012 to 919 million tonnes in 2018, an 8.4% increase. International shipping’s average carbon intensity in 2018 was 21% to 29% better than in 2008, depending on the metric used.
More recent IMO figures report total shipping fuel consumption falling from 213 million tonnes in 2019 to 211 million tonnes in 2023. Compared with 2008, average shipping carbon intensity in 2023 was 31.0% lower on a supply basis and 36.5% lower on a demand basis (MEPC 83). These improvements coexist with a large absolute-emissions challenge: IMO business-as-usual scenarios put 2050 shipping emissions at 90% to 130% of 2008 emissions. That final range is a forecast relative to 2008, not an observed 2050 outcome.