Seatrade Maritime: SeaLead plummets in shipping line rankings

From being one of the fastest growing container lines in 2024, and ranking 13th globally in 2025 according to Alphaliner, SeaLead, has plunged to 24th in the analyst’s top 100.

Singapore-headquartered SeaLead’s fleet has shrunk by around 110,000 teu over the last year.  The company now operates a fleet of 92,457 teu in total compared to 203,440 teu a year earlier.

The drop in operated capacity was driven the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in July last year when it sanctioned 16 container ships the company had on charter over links with Iran. OFAC sanctioned a total of 22 container ships.

SeaLead acted to quickly terminate the charters on the 16 vessels and according to Alphaliner this accounted for around two-thirds of the line’s total loss in capacity.

“Further network rationalisation, following the withdrawal of several standalone and joint loops, shed another 30,000 teu slots, resulting in a hard slide to 24th place,” the analyst said in its weekly newsletter.

It was though that SeaLead was exploring new trade corridors entering the China – Mexico trade in a multi-carrier partnership and launching a new intra-Asia route.

Looking at the carriers ranked from 13 – 30 in Alphaliner’s top 100 the largest is X-Press Feeders which moved up to 13th from 15th with an additional 29,950 teu in capacity.

Moving up to 15th from 17th in the ranking was another large feeder operator DP World owned Unifeeder, recently rebranded as Shipping Solutions, with a capacity of 166,547 teu up 18,297 teu on the previous year.