Update and Analysis of The Global Seafreight Market This Update and Analysis of the Global Seafreight Market is exclusively for DSV Air & Sea and made by Lars Jensen CEO and partner in Vespucci Maritime. Lars Jensen has 19 years of experience in the shipping industry and has for the last 10 years worked as an independent market analyst. October 21, 2021 Finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel … Looking at some of the market data from the past couple of weeks, it would appear that the continued worsening of problems has come to an end. If you are a little selective with the data – but still stick to the facts – the following describes some of the most recent developments: • The new global demand data from Container Trade Statistics for August shows a 2.1% growth in global demand and even more importantly, growth in container imports into North America slowed dramatically to just 0.9% compared to the same month last year. • The seemingly endless queue of vessels off the coast of California was reduced from roughly 70 to 50 vessels. This could be interpreted as a 29% improvement of the congestion problem. • The overall SCFI Index has declined for three consecutive weeks (except on the Asia – Europa trade which has been increasing) and on the Transpacific, the spot rates have been down by about 10% for the past few weeks. All the above is factually correct and can be combined to support a narrative according to which demand pressure is easing, bottlenecks are being resolved and freight rates are normalizing. … or is it yet another oncoming train? Relying only on the above data is to cherry-pick individual elements pointing to a normalisation. In the past few weeks, other developments have been equally true: • Congestion is worsening in European ports, not just in Brexit-affected ports in the UK, but also across Rotterdam, Antwerp, Le Havre, Hamburg, Bremerhaven, etc. This is leading to vessels waiting at anchor, constant changes in port omissions, and highly varying guidelines for gate-in/gate-out of containers. • The overall CCFI Index, which measures developments in contract rates and not spot rates, has continued to increase in the past two weeks and is now at a new record high. • The dwell time of containers in US west coast ports continues to increase
Download PDF file
Cookie policy