As the global economy rebounds and commodity demand recovers, shipping freight rates this year will constant increase. With the arrival of the peak shopping season in the United States, the increasing orders from retailers have doubled the pressure on the global supply chain. Currently, the container freight rate from China to the United States has exceeded US$20,000 per 40-foot container, setting a record high.
Figure 1
As shown in Figure 1, the freight rate from Shanghai to Chittagong, Bangladesh has basically remained stable since the beginning of the year. Taking a 40-foot high container as an example, the price is basically around US$4,100, but year-on-year Last year, the increase was relatively large. Last year, the sea freight for 40-foot high containers was basically around US$2,000. It began to decline in the second and third quarters, but it began to surge in the fourth quarter, and after the first quarter of this year, it began to remain stable.
Figure 2
As shown in Figure 2, Southeast Asia takes Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam as an example. Ho Chi Minh’s sea freight increased a lot in 2020. However, due to the outbreak of the epidemic in Vietnam again in the second quarter of this year, Vietnam’s The implementation of the city closure policy also led to a reduction in the volume of goods exported to Vietnam, so sea freight began to fall. When the epidemic situation in Vietnam eases, freight rates are expected to rise. Judging from the trend, freight rates in Southeast Asia are on the low side, and ocean freight rates are not particularly variable.
Figure 3
As shown in Figure 3, the price of Egyptian sea freight has increased significantly this year, and it continues to be a bullish trend. Since the beginning of this year, the price of a 40-foot high container in Egypt has risen from US$9,000 to nearly US$17,000 in August. However, since Egypt is taking the European route, the trend of Egypt’s sea freight can indirectly reflect the rising trend of European sea freight prices. European shipments have surged this year, mainly focusing on household appliances, small household appliances, and e-commerce goods. From last year, Since then, shipping costs have been rising and there seems to be no downward trend now.
American shipping costs have continued to skyrocket this year. In August, the freight rate per container on the China-US East route reached US$20,804, an increase of more than 500% from a year ago; the cost of China-US West was slightly less than US$20,000. The main reason for the continued price increase is the imbalance of shipping capacity. China’s export volume to the United States is much greater than the United States’ export volume to China.
When orders from all over the world are flying to Chinese factories like snowflakes, Chinese factories work overtime to catch up on orders and are swamped by money. A large number of material resources are constantly shipped from Chinese ports to all over the world. The entire overseas market is in a state of material shortage, and the demand for materials is far greater than that in China. Several things that China lacks are banned by the United States. This results in Europe and the United States needing Chinese things, but China does not need European and American things very much.
On the one hand, there are no empty boxes of goods waiting to be shipped to the sea
When a large number of giant ships loaded with goods arrived in Europe and the United States, they found that there was not that much goods in Europe and the United States that needed to be shipped back to China. The freight rate from China to the United States is rising and rising, and the freight rate from the United States to China is falling and falling. A bunch of sea-going ships are spending time in American ports, waiting for cargo to be loaded.
On the one hand, empty containers are refused to be shipped to the sea
Finally, a sea-going ship found out that it had this time to wait for goods here. It was better to sail the ship back to China quickly and make the next trip early to make money. Slowly, more and more seagoing ships voluntarily gave up loading, and supply and demand gradually returned to balance. Everyone returned to China with empty ships, which prevented U.S. agricultural products from being shipped to the sea because the time for packing them was valuable. The profits of those agricultural products are meager, and the affordable sea freight is too low, so low that all the freight combined is not worth a few days.
Behind the global shipping imbalance, the most important thing is the trade imbalance and the limited global shipping capacity. At the same time, related problems such as unstable seafarers and backward port infrastructure have been exposed, which has intensified the surge in shipping prices. At present, the resolution of these problems will not be a matter of time. It is still necessary to make predictions and book space in time to avoid A delivery issue occurred. </p
