Freight rates continue to fall after the long holiday! Maersk Mewest fell to $1,450, threatening to deepen the decline

The latest Delury World Container Freight Rate Index (WCI) was down 1.1%, down 62.3% compared with the same period last year.

Freight forwarders pointed out that the United States southwest route capacity reduction is more, so last week can have more than 1550 freight rates, the United States northwest freight rate is only about $1,300, the United States East because of the Panama Canal drought affected the passage of ships, freight rates are maintained at about $2,300. Maersk this week cut rates below $1,500, already below the cost of some shipping companies.

The European route is the disaster area, Evergreen shipping general manager Xie Huiquan recently admitted that now the European line a large box (40 feet container) of 800 US dollars freight, even variable costs are not enough, many shipping companies would rather not run. Industry veterans said that if the European line is 24,000 TEU super large container ships, the cost of each large box is about $1,000, but if it is about 8,500 boxes of container ships, the cost price will rise to about $1,500.

According to Alphaliner's ranking of the top 30 container ports in the first half of 2023, the container throughput of major ports in Europe and the United States has declined across the board, with a decline ranging from 5% to 25%. In contrast, China's ports performed better, growing 4.8% from the same period last year.

But growth has been limited at major transshipment ports in Southeast Asia such as Singapore and Port Klang in Malaysia, and while U.S. imports from Asia have fallen 21 percent in the first eight months of the year, shipping lines have managed to maintain some stability in trans-Pacific eastbound rates since early July as they continue to cut capacity.

According to Sea-Intelligence data, shipping companies plan to reduce excess capacity in the trans-Pacific eastbound by 14% in October, almost double the September, in contrast to the trans-Pacific eastbound, the outlook for the European westbound is not optimistic, and shipping companies are expected to aggressively expand the reduction of space by 25-30% in October to prevent freight rates from falling too fast. Given the large-scale pumping strategy, the maritime market will increase the unpredictability of freight increases and decreases, and face other challenges such as ship schedule changes and customs clearance transshipment.

Industry veteran analysis, the European line to newly built super large container ships, and the current continuous delivery of ships, these ships operating costs are high, the ship to cut space, fixed costs or expenditure, general fixed costs account for about 20% of operating costs.