Container freight rates from Asia continued to surge, reaching highs far in excess of long-term sustainable levels.
To safeguard against this year's volatile market and maintain profits, the container shipping industry adopted certain capacity management measures like restricted services, blank sailings and re-routed vessels — leading to severe disruption in the normal repositioning of empty containers. And although projections indicate that maritime trade will recover and expand by 4.8% in 2021, it's becoming clear that disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will have a lasting impact on the industry.
A large number of empty containers are still detained at ports where they shouldn't be, but are unable to get repositioned at an acceptable rate to ports where actual demand exists.
Due to increased demand and successful capacity management compared in December 2020 vs. December 2019, ocean freight rates from Shanghai to USWC tripled from average $1,500/40hc levels to $4,500+ levels. Ocean carriers published record profits in 2020 after so many years. However, this type of extraordinary increase is not sustainable and it will not continue the same way.
However, actual rates paid by shippers to secure containers and the last remaining slots to Europe are significantly higher.
“Most services are facing serious delays due to the weather, which also results in congestion in terminals,” Gold Star’ s Hoffmann said.
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