Sea Freight Prices Trend in 2021; Sea Freight Rates of China-U.S Routes Will Continue to Temain High Until Next Year

"There are orders, but no containers." The shortage of empty containers starting in the second half of last year has really worried foreign trade companies and cross-border e-commerce companies.

Affected by the Covid-19, the global shipping market has been in a state of severe flight delays earlier, especially in the European and North American markets, where the cargo volume is huge, and there have been tight or even "explosive" capacity shortages. The tight supply of transportation capacity caused by the congestion incident will undoubtedly continue to push up the already high transportation prices. At the same time, due to the long-term high level of loading rate of routes, liner companies also plan to increase the market freight rates of many routes after April, and the reduction in available capacity caused by canal blockage may prompt liner companies to speed up plans to release the impulse of price increases. ". "The freight here is the basic freight. Due to the imbalance between supply and demand in the market, there is a shortage of shipping spaces and containers. In order to ensure the smooth delivery of the goods, the cargo owner needs to pay other surcharges to the shipping company, such as cabin and container fees."

Compared with last year's lowest point of 818 points, the increase was 358%, reflecting the direction and extent of changes in the settlement freight price in the spot transportation market, which means that the ocean freight price has increased several times over the same period.

Prior to this, Maersk (Msk) has substantially doubled its expected profit for 2020, saying that the company's performance is being continuously driven by the "blowout" of demand levels. “Basically, it’s booking and coordinating shipping schedules. Since the second half of last year, the number of orders from domestic companies has increased dramatically, and our business volume has also increased accordingly.” Shortage of containers and high shipping costs bothered her. “The cost has increased. Some customers are not in a hurry to choose to suspend shipments.” Logistics Bus revealed that shipping prices from Qingdao to Europe, Southeast Asia and Australia have almost fully increased, at least double the same period last year.

Now, due to the delay of the ship to the port and the irregular sailing period, the need to pay for the cabin in advance has greatly increased the company's capital turnover pressure. " The rapid increase in ocean freight has offset the price advantage of the product. On the other hand, poor shipping, port congestion, extended delivery time and shortage of containers make some exporters afraid to receive the goods. China's epidemic prevention and control and production recovery are in good condition, a large number of orders flocked to China, foreign trade orders surged, and container demand increased sharply.

Since the outbreak of the epidemic, due to worker shortages, port congestion, national policies and limited domestic container production capacity, it has been "difficult to find a container" abroad, which ultimately led to high current freight rates.