The Christmas peak season has brought port congestion ahead of schedule, and container shipping rates have hit a new high. On September 10, the Shanghai Export Container Index (SCFI) released by the Shanghai Shipping Exchange rose to 4568.16 points, setting a new record high again. Compared with the lowest point of 820 points last year, the increase was as high as 457%.
Trans-Pacific eastbound route capacity is still tight compared to peak season demand, and shippers and importers are scrambling to purchase priority transportation services to ship goods as soon as possible. But labor shortages, extreme congestion and pandemic-related disruptions are expected to put more pressure on capacity into the year ahead.
Asia to Europe routes The shortage of space and equipment continues. Market demand exceeds supply, and freight rates continue to rise. The suspension of sailings and insufficient supplies of equipment have made the situation worse. Various carriers are overbooked and have begun to restrict the acceptance of bookings, or arrange to replace with , and the reliability of shipping schedules is also low.
As of this week, the Baltic Freight Index (Freightos Baltic Index) latest index shows:
Asia-US West freight price increased by 8% compared with last week to reach 20,586 US dollars/FEU, which is more than six times higher than a year ago;
Asia-US East Coast shipping costs increased 8% compared to last week, 4.5 times higher than a year ago, and reached US$22,173/FEU.
Asia-North Europe freight rates climbed 3% from last week, more than eight times that of a year ago and 2.5 times more than at the beginning of the year, reaching 14,221 US dollars/FEU. The freight rate of
Asia- Mediterranean climbed 2% from last week, reaching US$13,231/FEU.
With the shortage of containers and ships, "scalpers" who "speculate boxes and dump cargo" have also become active in the container shipping market. "International shipping prices are now ridiculously high. On the one hand, it is indeed due to the imbalance between supply and demand of shipping capacity and space. Another part of the reason is that scalpers are taking advantage of the market chaos to 'speculate on boxes.' Sometimes a box has to go through three hands before it can be obtained. ." said a Shanghai freight forwarder.
The container market is huge and the process is sophisticated. In addition to shipping companies and shipowners owning some of their own containers, large and small container leasing companies hold a larger portion of the containers. According to a freight forwarder, first-generation scalpers like obtained a large number of containers and resold them to the second generation. After repeated turnovers among peers, they continued to raise the price, so that in the end, the business of reselling boxes was better than directly working as a freight forwarder.
The industry is in chaos: is now You can make a boat with just one trip's abnormal shipping market, it is hard to find a cabin, the freight is comparable to the value of the goods, foreign trade manufacturers of low-value products have been forced to the red line of survival; recently Yiwu freight forwarders and cargo owners have joined forces to charter a ship to open a " Ningbo - Los Angeles" direct flight Routes, it is not surprising that cargo owners are forced to become ship owners. And the shipping company also made a lot of money.
Summary of the performance of the nine major shipping companies in the first half of this year
Maersk : operating income was US$26.6 billion and net profit was US$6.5 billion. It is expected that the full-year profit will exceed the sum of the past seven years;
CMA CGM: operating income is 22.48 billion US dollars, net profit reaches 5.55 billion US dollars, increased 29 times year-on-year;
COSCO Shipping Holdings : operating income was 139.3 billion yuan (approximately 21.54 billion U.S. dollars), and net profit was approximately 37.098 billion yuan (approximately 5.74 billion U.S. dollars) ), increased nearly 32 times year-on-year;
Hapag-Lloyd: operating income was US$10.6 billion, net profit was US$3.3 billion, increased year-on-year More than 9.5 times;
HMM: operating income was US$4.56 billion, net profit was US$310 million, and it lost approximately US$32.05 million in the same period last year, achieving a turnaround;
Evergreen Marine : operating income was US$6.83 billion, net profit was US$2.81 billion, increased by more than 27 times year-on-year;
Wanhai Shipping : operating income was NT$486.633 billion (approximately US$3.11 billion), and net profit after tax was NT$33.687 billion (approximately US$1.21 billion), with Year-on-year growth of 18 times;
Yang Ming Shipping: operating income was NT$135.55 billion, approximately US$4.87 billion, and net profit was NT$59.05 billion, approximately US$2.12 billion, increased by more than 32 times year-on-year;
ZIM: operating income was US$4.13 billion, net profit was US$1.48 billion, and increased by nearly 113 times year-on-year.
With the huge profits, everyone wants to get a piece of it. The container ship market is experiencing "sky-high" lease rates again. An 11-year-old Panamax container ship with a capacity of 4,250TEU from Greek shipowner Euroseas was chartered at a high price of $3.2 million per day, setting a new record again.
The shipyard has been fully booked with orders from major shipping companies, and the container factory is producing non-stop day and night. But will the international shipping market continue to be so prosperous? After the prosperity, it may also be...
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