News / Intra-Asia rates are under pressure from Chinese slowdown and cascaded tonnage

20/02/2015

The once robust intra-Asia tradelanes are seeing increased freight rate pressure due to the twin challenges of a decelerating Chinese economy and the trend for carriers to cascade bigger ships from deepsea east-west routes.

According to Drewry’s latest Container Freight Rate Insight, intra-Asia freight rates have fallen to their lowest level in four years,with its index plunging 10% in the three months to January 2015 to $900 per 40ft – a 7% year-on-year decline.

Due to the complex network of intra-Asia trades, ...

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Chas Deller
February 20, 2015 at 5:23 pm
If you exclude Far East-Australia/NZ rates
then the all in rate on most intra far east
trades is very low already , and has been for
a number of years. Seeing less than $800-1000
per 40ft ALL IN ,which also INCLUDES THC’s at
both ends is not unusual.
Deep sea carriers use this trade to reposition
empty boxes to China.
What might be interesting to plot is the transfer of
‘volume’ to Vietnam from China and see how
deep sea carriers are now supporting
that growth.

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