Container shipping: would a freight exchange drive rate volatility out of the system?

© Ingvar Bjork

Each week the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index (SCFI), along with other index providers and rate benchmarking platforms, provides market participants with rate transparency covering both spot and contracted rates in the ocean container freight market.

The SCFI is well established and is regularly quoted in the financial results of carriers as a bellwether to the market’s health.

Meanwhile, disruptive platforms such as Xeneta allow users to monitor past and future rate movements across tens of thousands of port pairs for a variety ...