Rate erosion may be easing, but rock-bottom prices are 'not good for anybody'
The ‘jury is out’ on whether container spot rates have bottomed-out, but on the key ...
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Fed up with the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index (SCFI)? Try the Ningbo Containerised Freight Index (NCFI) instead – although we’re sorry to report that it doesn’t make any happier reading for carriers. Today the Ningbo-North Europe route is showing $190 per teu, $41 less than the SCFI. Perhaps that’s because the NCFI is taken from a panel of 11 freight forwarders, rather than the 15 carriers and 15 shippers the SCFI is derived from. It is also intriguing that the development is a joint-venture involving London’s Baltic Exchange – it dry bulk BDI is used by economists as a core indicator of the state of the global economy, and it would be nice to see the container shipping occupy a similar role.
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