The Asia-Northern Europe route is flooded with excess capacity that has led to weeks of sharp declines, and Maersk is trying to increase the route's various freight rates (FAK) by 49%.
According to exchange rate benchmark platform Xeneta, Tuesday's average spot price from Asia to Northern Europe was 1276 dollars per FEU, while according to Platts, North Asia to the UK was 1050 dollars per FEU.
Maersk said that in order to continue to provide customers with a wide range of high-quality service portfolio, it plans to from Asia to Rotterdam, Gdansk and Felixstow and other Nordic hubs of FAK rates to 1,900 per 40-foot equivalent unit, from July 31 effective.
Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at Xeneta, said that Maersk's target increase on July 31 is the traditional import season for European shipping companies, and more shipping companies may increase freight rates accordingly. Yet GRIs that seek to raise interest rates above current levels are often difficult to succeed. A series of sharp trans-Pacific GRI increases in April, May and June did little to raise the spot rate for Asia-North America trade.
Seasonal demand is missing
the rising demand at this time of the peak season should put upward pressure on interest rates. Hapg-Lloth spokesman Tim Seifert said it was difficult to assess the peak season in Asia and Europe at the moment, with continued weak demand from European importers and large capacity in the market severely weakening interest rates. Customer behavior is still quite complex across industries as of now, with some bookings up and others reporting high inventories.
Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis CEO Alan Murphy Alan Murphy said that now that it is July, the peak season should have begun, but there is no sign that European importers have seasonal demand.
Airlines go to "loss field"
the massive influx of capacity into services on global trade routes. In June alone, carriers took delivery of 277,873 20-foot-standard (teu) vessels, according to data Linerlytica by container shipping analytics firm
According to Drury, the total capacity of these container ship orders is 7.3 million TEUs, accounting for nearly 30% of the existing fleet capacity. About 65 percent of these ship orders have a capacity of more than 15,000 TEU, mainly for Asia-Europe trade.
Murphy said that from September 2022 to February this year after the Chinese New Year, airlines in reducing Asia-Europe routes capacity is very active, but then reduce the number of blank routes, resulting in the entire spring and early summer capacity net growth.
freight forwarding network
