Has fallen back to 2 years ago! The shipping fee to the US and West breaks 2900? Shipping company publicly acknowledged for the first time that it received request for price reduction from the owner

Recently, in the freight forwarding circle, it has been reported that from Yantian to Long Beach Port, the quotation for receiving goods for a large container at US$2,850 has exceeded US$3,000.

Last year, the price of some US-West routes exceeded US$30,000. This year, the freight rate of US-West routes has dropped by 80-90% from the high point of last year.

Freight rates fell for 13 consecutive weeks and the decline expanded.

The latest issue of the world's four major container freight indices still fell sharply:

The Shanghai Container Freight Index (SCFI) was 2562.12 points, down 285.5. points from last week, with a weekly decline of 10.0%, which has been declining for 13 consecutive weeks. It was down 43.9% from the same period last year.

Drewry's World Containerized Index (WCI) has fallen for 28 consecutive weeks, the latest down 5% to $5,378.68/FEU.

The Baltic Sea Freight Index (FBX) global composite index was $4,862/FEU, down 8% for the week;

The Ningbo Export Container Freight Index (NCFI) of the Ningbo Shipping Exchange closed at 1,910.9 points, down 11.6% from last week.

The latest SCFI (9.9) freight rates on major routes continued to fall:

North American routes: The performance of the transportation market failed to improve, and the fundamentals of supply and demand were relatively weak, resulting in the continued downward trend of market freight rates.

The freight rate in the United States and West fell from US$3,959 last week to 3484/FEU, a weekly drop of US$475, or 12.0%, and the price in the US and West recorded a new low since August 2020;

The US East freight rate fell sharply to US$7,767/FEU from US$8,318 last week, down US$551 or 6.6% for the week;

European routes: Services shrink, manufacturing declines, inflation soars, and the economy slumps. The transportation market continued to be weak, and the market freight rate continued to fall.

The European base port freight rate is 3877 US dollars/TEU, down 375 US dollars for the week, down 8.8%;

Mediterranean route: The freight rate was US$4,222/TEU, down US$552 for the week, down 11.6%;

Persian Gulf routes: The freight rate was US$1,481/TEU, down US$286 or 16.2% for the week.

Australia-New Zealand route: The freight rate was US$2,489/TEU, down US$173 or 6.5% for the week.

South American routes: fell for 7 consecutive weeks, the freight rate was 7183 US dollars/TEU, a weekly drop of 798 US dollars, a decrease of 10.0%.

It is worth mentioning that the Shanghai Composite Export Container Freight Index shows that the freight rate has fallen for 17 consecutive weeks from the high point at the beginning of the year, then rebounded for 4 weeks, and then fell again for 13 consecutive weeks. In late July, it fell below the level of the same period last year. The market has been falling and falling, and even intraday losses can reach hundreds of dollars.

What caused the plummeting sea freight prices?

Ding Chun, a professor at the Institute of World Economics at the School of Economics at Fudan University, said that high inflation rates in Europe and the United States, combined with geographic conflicts, energy crises and epidemics, have led to a sharp decline in shipping demand, which is the main reason for the plummeting global ocean freight rate.

Ding Chun believes that although the current slump is to bring last year's abnormally high freight rates back to a relatively normal level, "it means that the era of sky-high freight rates for ocean freight has come to an end."

Kang Shuchun, chief executive of China International Shipping Network, said the imbalance between supply and demand has caused ocean freight rates to plummet.

During the epidemic, due to the breakage of the supply chain, the supply of certain materials in some countries was cut off, and there was a "stocking tide" in many countries, which also led to the occurrence of abnormally high shipping costs last year.

This year, due to the high inflationary pressure in the global economy, demand has declined. At the same time, the previously hoarded inventory cannot be digested by the market, which has caused European and American importers to reduce or even cancel commodity orders, and the "order shortage" has spread around the world.

Xu Kai, chief information officer of Shanghai International Shipping Research Center, said that the big data of port and shipping shows that in the third quarter of last year, about 30% of the world's container ships were parked, and this proportion dropped to about 26% in the same period this year, which shows that the global shipping turnover ability improved;

On the other hand, the demand for shipping capacity in global commodity trade has declined, so lower freight rates are inevitable.

Shipping companies face the pressure of contract price renegotiation.

With the continuous decline of the spot freight rate in the market, Yang Ming Shipping has publicly admitted that the shipping company is under pressure to "re-negotiate" the contract freight rate at the latest shareholder briefing recently, and said that it has received a request from the cargo owner to reduce the contract price. Require. It has also become the first shipping company to publicly admit to receiving bargaining requests from cargo owners!

Yang Ming Shipping said: "In May, whether it is shipping to Europe or the United States, when negotiating the contract price, both the shipper and our side are optimistic about the market, so the contract price is very high, but now the spot freight rate is sharply increased. The drop put a lot of pressure on those contracts."

For the global container shipping market, the third quarter is a traditional peak season. However, from July to September this year, the market failed to recover as scheduled, but continued to fall under pressure, which made many people in the industry express emotion.

In this regard, an earlier report released by Maersk also pointed out that the economic outlook of Western economies is weak, and consumer demand is still sluggish, resulting in a mediocre performance of freight peaks this year.

Chen Zhen, a researcher of Founder's mid-term futures, believes that compared with the shipping price of tens of thousands of US dollars last year, the global container shipping market is still not optimistic in the fourth quarter.

Source:Wai Hang Yun