New price hikes may slow ocean spot rate slide – but for how long?
Container spot freight rate indices showed some divergence this week, indicating that recent falls in ...
© Abdullatif Omar
By Mike Wackett
Some liner services are reported to have full ships again, container spot rates have stabilised, the charter market is bullish and ocean carriers are back at shipyards ordering new tonnage.
It seems the week has started positively for carriers and shipowners, with ’green shoots’ of a recovery starting to emerge.
Today’s Ningbo Containerized Freight Index (NCFI) commentary reports that during the past week, container spot rates increased on 15 of the 21 export routes it tracks from the Chinese port.
For instance, on ...
Comment on this article
Andy Dennis
March 28, 2023 at 7:03 amYour article 5 days before referred to Maersk having 29 ships idle, MSC 13 etc. Not sure how we got from that to ‘a return in demand across all networks’ and needing to secure more tonnage so quickly?.
Surely full ships is due to a reduction in supply rather than increased demand.
Mike Wackett
March 28, 2023 at 9:44 amHi Andy,
Many thanks for your comment.
For the past few weeks we have seen a bullish charter market which seemed to be a disconnect with the freight market.
However, several pieces of data we received yesterday suggested that there was indeed a demand recovery – not necessarily on the major tradelanes but on the secondary trades.
It really is a delicate balance for the carriers and the previous article also referred to the different strategies of the lines.
Time will tell if those ‘green shoots’ blossom in the Spring!
Best
Mike