News / Shock for container lines as contract rates start to fall again

© Vladimir Serebryanskiy

In a significant setback for carriers hoping to improve profitability, ocean freight benchmarking platform Xeneta reported that long-term container contract rates had fallen by an average of 4.2% in April.

Oslo-based Xeneta, which tracks crowd-sourced data from over 110 million contracted container rates, recorded a 4.8% decrease in contract rates between Asia and North Europe and a 3.4% reduction in transpacific headhaul contracts.

The decline followed “steady increases” achieved by container lines in the previous two months of Xeneta’s XSI Public Indices ...