News / North-south freight rates on the up, but carriers not having it all their own way

Ocean carriers have succeeded in substantially hiking container freight rates on key north-south trades during the past year.

According to Alphaliner, judicious capacity management has pushed spot rates from China to South America to their highest level since the inception of the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) in 2009.

This week, the China-South America component of the SCFI added $48 per teu to hit a new high of $3,599 per teu, which, notes Alphaliner, “is light-years away from the market bottom in early 2016, ...