“But the main problem facing world shipping at the moment is that there’s too much of it for the amount of cargo in circulation. This has increased competition between firms.”
So the biggest ships can offer the lowest price?
Yes, bigger ships can result in lower costs.
First assume we have a ship that carries 5000 containers; now built a ship that carries 20,000 containers. The crew size will be about the same, maybe a few more but certainly not four times as many. The engines will be bigger on the larger ship but not four times as big. And finally, surface area related to cost of hull construction but volume determines container capacity. Consider a box 10x10x10. Volume 1000 cu feet. Consider a box 20x20x20 8000 cu feet. Surface area-front, back, two sides, top and bottom. 6x10x10 = 600 sq ft. for the small box. 6x20x20= 2400 sq feet. So surface area quadruples but volume increases by a factor of 8.
The economies of scale with such a large ship will tend to make it less expensive to transport something on that ship than on a smaller one.
The Baltic Dry Index is way down and the owners of this ship may have a problem finding enough cargo
900 million tins of baked beans? Yikes!