The freight rates of the U.S.-West and Southeast Asian lines have risen wildly, and the shipping company is still lying and winning

Since October, freight rates in Southeast Asia's maritime market have risen one after another.

According to data from the Shanghai Shipping Exchange, the Southeast Asia Freight Rate Index was 5995.69 in the previous period (November 26, 2021), while the Freight Rate Index for the current period (December 3, 2021) increased by 735.36 to 6731.05. A foreign trade merchant in Yiwu told the interface news reporter that the current container price sent from China to Indonesia has risen from the original 1700 US dollars to more than 3000 US dollars now, almost doubled.

Recently, there have also been media reports that the freight rate of most routes has increased by nearly one or two times in one month. From South China to Ho Chi Minh Port, in the month or so from the end of October to the beginning of December, the freight rate of 40 feet of containers has risen from the original 500 US dollars to 2000 US dollars - 2500 US dollars, an increase of as much as 5 times.

In addition, according to Vietnam's "Industry and Commerce Daily", the soaring freight rates, lack of transport ships, lack of warehouses and other factors have led to the stagnation of many agricultural products and food export enterprises in Vietnam. Cai Ruxie, manager of Rongxie, said in the report that the current freight rate per container (40 feet) to Europe is between 8,000-10,000 US dollars, which is now 10 times higher than at the beginning of the year.

This was also confirmed by a freight forwarding manager. The freight forwarding manager of a logistics company in Ningbo revealed to Interface News that the maritime market in Southeast Asia can be described as soaring, and last week suggested that a cargo owner should seize the order when the container price is still more than 2700 US dollars, and the result is that the other party hesitates so far, and the price has risen to more than 3600 US dollars.

The freight forwarder analysis said that the rise in maritime prices in Southeast Asia is related to multiple factors, including the easing of the epidemic in Southeast Asia and the reversal of more shipping companies to Southeast Asia.

Interface News learned that the epidemic situation in Southeast Asia has recently slowed down, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia and other countries have begun to relax the requirements for epidemic prevention measures for manufacturing enterprises, factories have begun to resume work, and the demand for shipping and air transportation capacity in the region has begun to be strong.

However, due to congestion in some ports in Southeast Asia, the actual supply of capacity in the market has decreased. The above-mentioned freight forwarders also pointed out that the capacity investment in the Southeast Asian market has been reduced a lot, so when the demand rises, the capacity cannot keep up.

In the case of imbalance between supply and demand, Southeast Asia began to take over the U.S.-West route, and there was a situation where a box was difficult to find and freight rates soared. Therefore, freight forwarding logistics companies have begun to issue early warnings to customers who export to the Southeast Asian market, saying that freight rates will continue to rise and shipments should be tightened.

At the same time, due to the delay in solving the problem of congestion in U.S. ports, many shipping companies are withdrawing from the U.S. and West routes. Wanhai Shipping has previously said it is moving vessels from the Asia-West Route to interior Asia. In addition, the Star Shipping industry made a similar diversion and suspended the uplink service to Los Angeles for at least seven weeks.

Interface News noted that according to the data summarized by the easy shipping schedule, the routes from Shanghai and Ningbo to the West, the East and the North Europe have all experienced large-scale suspension and port jumping, and South China and North China have also stopped routes and jumped ports in the Us and West routes. The Southeast Asian market has also begun a pattern of soaring freight rates affected by this.

In fact, although the freight rates of some routes in the early stage have experienced a brief decline, as of now, the global maritime freight rates have not seen the expected continuous price reduction, and the overall situation is still at a high level.

Affected by the continuous record highs of sea freight rates, the revenue of all shipping companies around the world has risen significantly. According to shipping analyst firm Sea-intelligence, shipping companies' operating profits were as high as $37.24 billion (EBIT before interest and taxes) in the third quarter of this year. If you add the operating profit of $42.1 billion realized by shipping companies in the first half of this year, the operating profit of shipping companies in the first three quarters of this year has reached $80 billion.

Relatively speaking, in all quarters from 2010 to 2020, the combined profit of shipping companies was only 37.86 billion yuan. That is, operating profit in the first three quarters of this year is more than double the sum of the profits of the past decade. It is worth noting that the second largest shipping company, MSC, is a privately held company and does not need to publish the accounts, so the data does not include MSC.