The history of the SCFI – the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index

© Konstantin Sutyagin

The Loadstar refers to the SCFI on a weekly basis as the metric to gauge the health of the two largest deepsea east-west trades, Asia-Europe and the transpacific. But that was not the reason for its formation back in 2005. According to this blog from US forwarder Flexport, the Chinese government wanted to provide a pricing guide for exporters, as well as local buyers and sellers of freight space, as well as also provide the foundations for a container derivatives market, which had for some years been eyed by international cargo brokers looking for some market diversity, away from dry and wet bulk.