Barcelona, December 4, 2020.- Despite the global economic recession, maritime traffic has started to increase its prices, at least between Asia and Europe. This has been reported by the publication Splas247.com: As analysts have been predicting, spot rates on the Asia-Europe container tradelane shot up today, playing belated catch-up with the booming transpacific.
Tight capacity and limited equipment availability amid a spike in consumer demand saw rates published on the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) leap $447 per teu to $2,091, up 27% in the space of a week. Asia – Mediterranean rates also shot up, climbing by $421 or 23% this week to $2,219 per teu.
Buoyant weekly figures were also published for most tradelanes today – Asia to West Africa rallying by $300 to $4,459 per teu, while trips from Asia to the east coast of Latin America shot up by $402 to hit $4,805 per teu.
Transpacific rates, meanwhile, were flat for the week, but still remain at record highs however.
Recent data published by consultancy Sea-Intelligence shows liners are on track to increase capacity year-on-year on the transpacific by 27.3% in December. On Asia-Europe however, the carriers’ deployment plans indicate a capacity growth of 6.7% year-on-year. Plenty of ships have been rerouted to the far more profitable transpacific in recent months.
“As carriers prioritise containers on the transpacific, some are shifting ex-Asia capacity from Europe to the US,” commented Eytan Buchman from online box booking platform Freightos in a note to clients earlier this week.
“The equipment shortage and port congestion in the US and UK is leading to pain for shippers, with reports of bookings being rejected for lack of empties, containers being offloaded at alternative ports, and shippers delaying bookings until things quiet down,” Buchman added.
The record rates environment in recent months has prompted many governments to intervene. Splashreported this week on the Federal Maritime Commission’s (FMC) expanded probe into liner activity, while India, China and South Korea are also advising liners to rein in their sky high charges.
“I am sure that we will hear more noise now from the European Shippers’ Council, and potentially investigations in the EU similar to what the FMC, China and Korea have been doing,” commented Andy Lane, a container expert at CTI Consultancy in Singapore.
- “Creating a resilient supply chain is the key theme for 2023”
- Skyports Drone and Pyka have agreed on a partnership for heavy payload drone logistics
- The Top 11 Work Truck Fleet Productivity Tips
- “Generational differences in purchasing are among the changes in the supply chain companies must respond to”
- Top 5 trends in automation
- How Self Driving Trucks Can Improve Logistics?
- Governments around the world ramp up the ESG requirements for global supply chains
- Korea’s e-commerce giant Coupang to invest in logistics automation
- “Deep learning methods can become a very valuable tool for obtaining accurate estimates of the position of objects”
- Reuters: “Maersk, IBM discontinue shipping blockchain platform”
- “Implementing a reverse logistics strategy can be vital to the success of your business”
- Autonomous driving startup Waabi just deployed its first robotic semi-trucks for on-road testing in the U.S.
- Why American and European Trucks Are So Different?
- Resilience in the medical supply chain
- “Post-pandemic, grocery logistics will never be the same”
- Transportation Software: “Shipments are only registered once”
- Transportation Software: “Creating your own itineraries allows greater cost control and savings in route management”
- Transport Software: “e- TMS AndSoft allows the pricing of shipments to be an automatic management”
- Transportation Software: “A simple chat within TMS has meant a great improvement in the communication of alerts and incidents of transport companies”
- Transportation Software TMS AndSoft: “Transport planners have in the TMS their best tool to manage fleets on a daily basis”
- Transportation Software e – TMS AndSoft: “We parameterize any need of the transport company according to its differentiating elements”
- Transport Software TMS AndSoft: “In freight transport, controlling the cost of each trip is more important”
- AndSoft TMS Transport Software: “Implementing a TMS in a freight transport company is never easy”
- Transportation Software TMS AndSoft: “First of all, the transport company has to be ready for digital transformation”
- Transportation Software TMS AndSoft: “We collaborate with the best providers in cargo exchanges, on-board computing, route optimizer, cartography and eCMR”
- Implementation time of a TMS, management software, in a transport/logistics company?