Table of contents
Topic of the week:
Demand seems to be ramping up as strong export/import demand in India trades leads major lines to invest more in their coverage, Barcelona ports are suffering from congestion due to an increase in transhipment volume, and air freight demand continues to climb as eCommerce volumes build.
With anticipated growth in demand, many container lines are opting to boost their services and coverage across India trade lanes. CMA CGM are implementing their new BIGEX 2 service which will call at many India ports connecting them to the Gulf market. The liner has also added new port calls to its Indamex service which links West India to the US East Coast, as well as implementing a new shuttle service from Chennai to Colombo and Singapore operating on a fortnightly basis. However, they are not the only liner to start updating their India coverage, with the likes of Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk optimising their India to Europe networks. Both container lines are adding new port calls to their Indian trade services with the attempt to extend the market to Indian exporters. Maersk have also announced that this should provide shorter transit times for shipments moving to North Europe.
A combination of increased transhipment growth and local gateway traffic has lead to increased congestion at Barcelona Port. Over the last few years Barcelona Port has been taking on some larger vessels, leading to more containers being passed through per calling. As well as this, the increasing amount of Chinese electric vehicles that are being imported has lead to more of these shipments being containerized, just adding to container volumes and congestion. The Barcelona Port Authority’s director of strategy, Jordi Torrent, recently spoke with The Loadstar, explaining that, “Traffic from Turkey to the western Mediterranean is also increasing a lot, same with Morocco, and Inditex is moving greater numbers of containers through Barcelona…We don’t have room for maneuvering the containers around the yards, although we are also trying to create inland locations for further capacity.” Barcelona port have been implementing measures to mitigate effects of blockages, including additional gate hours and more dockers.
Air freight volumes are also on the rise. “We’ve gone from likely to probable that there could be double-digit growth this year. I’m not picking up any signals that things might go south,” says chief airfreight officer at Xeneta, Niall van de Wouw. A forwarder in Shanghai stated, “The overall e-commerce volume is occupying more than 50% of airline capacity at the moment.” With sea freight rates hiking due to the Red Sea Crisis, demand has increased, equipment shortages are apparent, and shippers may be looking to ship their goods via air. This combined with the climbing eCommerce volumes it seems as though demand could be here to stay for a while.
Sea:
- Over the last two weeks China/East Asia to North America West Coast spot rates have increased by 18.6% from $5,030 /FEU to $5,968 /FEU according to Freightos data.
- China/East Asia to North America East Coast spot rates have risen over the last two weeks, increasing by 12% to $7,552 /FEU.
- Global container spot prices have risen over the last two weeks, and are now sitting at $4,119 /FEU, a 18% increase over the last two weeks, but a 217.5% increase from spot rates this time in 2023 according to the Freightos Baltic Index (FBX)
Air:
- Global Air Freight spot rates currently sit at $2.37, as rates continue to fluctuate according to the Freightos Air Freight Index (FAX)
- Europe to Northern America spot rates currently sit at $1.63 (100-3000kg), says FAX, decreasing by 4 %
- Europe to Asia, Greater China spot rates currently sit at $1.28 (100-3000kg), says FAX, decreasing by 2.3 %
That’s all for this week’s update…
Check out our other insights and articles for more in depth industry news and trending topics, or get in contact to discuss some of our best in class freight forwarding services!
