Transpacific rates continued their decline over the past week, with carriers forced to undercut rates on both the West Coast and East Coast as capacity utilization levels are still dropping. There will be some capacity reductions over the coming weeks, with carriers expected to obtain a $200-300/feu rate increase in early July but the sustainability of the rate increase remains in doubt after the failure of the last 4 transpacific GRI attempts. Asia-Europe rates continued to slip despite relat
Transpacific rates have fallen to fresh lows with rates dropping to $1,100 to $1,150/feu to the West Coast which is below the SCFI assessment of $1,207/feu. Rates to the US East Coast rates took a larger tumble with rates set to drop below $2,000/feu compared to the current SCFI rate of $2,103. The resolution of the ILWU negotiations will put further pressure on transpacific freight rates as the threat of a peak season disruption to cargo flows into the US has been removed and with no pick up c
The intra-Asia tradelanes are coming under the most pressure at the moment with rates on several key corridors already slipping to pre-2020 levels as capacity that were previously redeployed to the Transpacific are now returning to Asia. Total containership capacity employed on the Intra-Far East routes is rising again after a 2 year decline, as ships that were redeployed to the more lucrative long-haul trades now returning in large numbers. Intra-FE capacity peaked in early 2020 at 3m teu bu
The Golden Week holidays in China provided little respite for the sliding freight and charter rates. There was no SCFI publication last week due to the Chinese holidays but SCFIS (SCFI on Settled Rates), another index also from Shanghai Shipping Exchange, was published yesterday (10 Oct) where the SCFIS for Shanghai-USWC has fallen to level last seen in May 2020: 1,384, down 11% from the last print on 26 Sep. The SCFIS for Shanghai-Northern Europe was 3,434, fell 13% since 26 Sep but still a mul