Matson's earnings have taken a huge leap as a result of transpacific boxship traffic that chief executive Matt Cox has never seen in his four decades in shipping.

As TradeWinds reported, the New York-listed owner of small containerships on Tuesday reported a $78.2m profit for the first three months of 2021, beating year-ago earnings by almost $75m.

"In my nearly 40 years in the business, I've not seen an environment like this with international trade lanes operating at capacity and widespread supply chain congestion leading to pressures at US ports, terminals, rail yards and warehouses," he said during a call with analysts on first-quarter results.

"At Matson, we remain focused on maintaining reliable trade lane services and helping customers in both ocean transportation and logistics work through this very challenging period."

The company's high-speed CLX and CLX+ US-China services saw a 219% jump in year-on-year volume, pushing revenue up 27% from the first three months of 2020.

"Logistics operating income for the first quarter increased year-over-year as a result of continued elevated goods consumption and inventory restocking in addition to the favourable supply and demand fundamentals in our core markets," Cox said.

"Widespread supply chain congestion at ports, terminals, rail yards and warehouses has created a very challenging environment, and many of our business lines are actively helping customers manage through the chaos."

Stifel analyst Ben Nolan noted that narrow-beam panamax boxships are fixing at $40,000 per day amid the demand, up from the $8,000 per day charged a year ago.

Fearnley Securities said in a note that transpacific US-China boxship routes sold out in May after year-on-year volume jumps of 10% in January, 13.5% in February and 51% in March, according to freight forwarder Flexport.

"Moreover, imports numbers are outpacing retail sales growth, implying that there is a fair amount of inventory restocking going on," Flexport said.

"Finally, albeit carriers have opened again for spot cargo, there are very hefty premiums baked into these quotes."