Due to the impact of the week-long Suez Canal blockage, ships and containers in Asia have been restricted, and container spot freight rates on popular routes such as Europe and the United States have experienced sharp increases. has risen, and ports will continue to be congested.
Recent port congestion
There is a huge backlog of ships arriving in Singapore, Rotterdam and New York
It is reported that in the supply chain congestion caused by the Suez Canal , an estimated 1.9 million TEU of cargo is being shipped to congested ports around the world.
01
Port congestion will continue into the third quarter
At a briefing last week at Hapag-Lloyd, the world’s fifth largest shipping company, its CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said he expected congestion issues in the container market to remain until the third quarter.
“Not only in many ports in the United States, Europe and Asia, to a certain extent, there is a congestion problem, which means that currently shipping companies actually need to A lot of ship capacity to transport the same number of containers,” said Habben Jansen.
“Simply put, for each service, if you want to continue to offer a weekly service, you will need to add one or two more ships, to a certain extent Depends on whether it’s going to the U.S. or Europe.
Of course, we’re also seeing some port capacity reductions because of labor shortages or pandemic-related restrictions in many places .” He added: “Short-term freight rates have surged due to a crowded market and strong demand.”
02
North American port workers strike
On Monday, port truck drivers in California (Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach) began a general strike, including those who were illegally fired after voting to form a union. Fired driver.
03
U.S. port productivity hits record low
2021 In February this year, North America’s container cargo imports from the Far East surged to 1.62 million TEUs, an increase of 100% from the low point in the same period last year.
Driven by the U.S. economic stimulus policy, trans-Pacific liner routes have strengthened for eight consecutive months.
For U.S. ports, the surge in cargo volume is a double-edged sword. The land and sea logistics chains connected to the ports are overloaded; For liner companies, strong market demand has created multiple transportation bottlenecks, especially around major ports of entry.
04
High sea freight is expected to continue until 2023!
Drewry’s latest container forecast report shows that the shipping company “will be profitable for at least the next two years, that is, until 2023”. The company said growth in carrier quarterly operating profits in 2020 “doubled every three months.”
However, the company added that “for operators after 2022 and 2023, things may not be so easy.” “A sure indicator of the current heat in the industry is the sharp increase in orders for new-build ships. In the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, new orders more than tripled those in the previous nine months; construction contracts signed in 2021 already far exceed those in 2020 A record for the whole year – a staggering 1.45 million TEU orders were received in just three months.
Drewry said that in this series of orders After that, the order volume has now reached 15% of the existing fleet. Shipowners are now working hard to build ships, but they will not be completed until two or three years later, but we cannot predict what the shipping environment will be like at that time. This is an investment full of risks.
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