News / Near-record transpac spot rate surge a 'harbinger of instability', says Sea-Intelligence 

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A sharp increase in container spot rates on the major east-west trades has propelled freight prices higher this week, but new analysis suggests the latest spike is far more unusual on the transpacific than on the Asia-Europe corridor. 

According to Sea-Intelligence, spot rates measured by the World Container Index (WCI) recorded exceptionally strong week-on-week gains, prompting questions over whether the latest market movement represents an extraordinary event or a more familiar pattern. 

The consultancy found that, on the transpacific trade to the US west coast, the latest weekly increase of $1,092 per 40ft ranks among the largest recorded since the WCI data series began, in 2012. 

While a handful of larger weekly increases have occurred, the analyst said these extreme rate jumps were concentrated in the post-2020 period, when supply chains were affected first by the pandemic and later by disruption linked to the Red Sea crisis. 

A similar pattern was evident on the US east coast trade, although less pronounced. 

Sea-Intelligence calculated the number of occasions on which weekly spot rate increases exceeded those most recently recorded: the results showed that on the US west coast route, only two larger week-on-week increases have been seen over the past 14 years. For the US east coast, larger increases have occurred just eight times. 

Stephanie Loomis, head of procurement, pricing, and commercial relations of ocean product at Noatom Logistics, told The Loadstar Podcast News in Brief this year had been “by far” the “most complicated and confusing” transpacific-eastbound contract season she has seen across a 30-year career.  

“We’ve had decades of it being rather easy to contract; in the sense that carriers are pretty aligned in pricing structures and what a base rate from one lane to another is,” she said. 

“And now that’s been completely thrown out of the window. You’ve got very different methodologies, carrier by carrier, some are implementing high emergency fuel surcharges, some want to change their bunker [surcharge] monthly.” 

She noted that while most of her customers wanted tenders that were “still pretty much an annual rate”, figuring that out became “much more complicated”. 

Part of this, she explained, was that seasonality “has been thrown out the window”.  

“Mainly because we’ve had several years now of importers having to deal with the geopolitical disruptions, the Suez Canal closure, the Liberation Day tariffs, and now, of course, the war in Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz. 

“The focus for a lot of these importers now is to try to minimise the exposure…  that really has changed the traditional peak season that we’ve been accustomed to on the transpacificm being end of July through October. I think it continues over the past few years to get shifted much earlier.”  

By contrast, rate volatility on the Asia-Europe trade appears far less exceptional. 

Sea-Intelligence found weekly spot rate increases larger than this week’s surge had occurred 28 times on services to North Europe and 21 times on routes to the Mediterranean since 2012. 

The analysis also highlighted a stark difference between pre- and post-pandemic market behaviour. Before January 2020, the transpacific trades had almost never experienced weekly increases on the scale seen this week – Sea-Intelligence identifying only a single comparable event on the US east coast route, in January 2016. 

However, similar spikes were relatively common on Asia-Europe services prior to the pandemic. The consultancy found that all of the most extreme Asia-Europe rate increases occurred between late 2012 and mid-2016, a period marked by intense market turbulence and repeated price wars among carriers. 

Looking ahead, Sea-Intelligence suggested the latest rate surge could be “a harbinger of instability”, rather than an isolated event. 

The analyst warned: “As the market is heading towards a new cyclical downturn in 2027-2029, and hence more turbulence, we should perhaps expect that this week’s spike is not a sudden new aberration, but rather a harbinger of instability.”