Vessel capacity analysis on the Mediterranean to North America East Coast trade lane shows a sharp divergence between average and median vessel sizes, reports Copenhagen's Sea-Intelligence. The change is driven by a small number of new, larger ships rather than a broad structural shift.

Sea-Intelligence plotted all vessels deployed on the trade since 2012, revealing a dense cluster of ships ranging from 800 TEU to an historical ceiling of about 9,600 TEU.

In 2025, a new cluster of vessels in the 13,000-15,000+ TEU range emerged. Two of these were deployed by MSC on its EMUSA service, though the line continues to use 8,000-9,000 TEU ships.

The remainder were deployed by MSC on its Dragon service, marking the first consistent use of vessels of this size on the trade.

The strategy has created a two-tiered vessel size structure, with implications for North American East Coast terminals. Ports must now handle scheduled calls from much larger ships, resulting in significantly higher container exchanges per call.