After peaking in late 2020 and not budging much through the first quarter, the rate for a 40-foot container to Los Angeles from Shanghai hit $4,403 last week, the highest in Drewry World Container Index data going back to 2011. Cargo shippers on less-traveled transatlantic routes are feeling the sting, too: Rotterdam to New York surged to a record $3,500.
With their fiscal and monetary floodgates wide open, countries with advanced vaccine programs are countering Covid-19 headwinds of unemployment, weak services industries and restricted travel. But the wave of stimulus buoying consumption has inundated the supply side the manufacturers of goods that often rely on global distribution chains.
Container shipping rates are heading higher again, driven to new heights by unrelenting consumer demand and company restocking from Europe to the U.S. that are exhausting the world economy’s capacity to move goods across oceans.
After peaking in late 2020 and not budging much through the first quarter, the rate for a 40-foot container to Los Angeles from Shanghai hit $4,403 last week, the highest in Drewry World Container Index data going back to 2011. Cargo shippers on less-traveled transatlantic routes are feeling the sting, too: Rotterdam to New York surged to a record $3,500.
With their fiscal and monetary floodgates wide open, countries with advanced vaccine programs are countering Covid-19 headwinds of unemployment, weak services industries and restricted travel. But the wave of stimulus buoying consumption has inundated the supply side the manufacturers of goods that often rely on global distribution chains.
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By Brendan Murray (Bloomberg) Container shipping rates are heading higher again, driven to new heights by unrelenting consumer demand and company restocking from Europe to the U.S. that are exhausting the world economy’s capacity to move goods across oceans.
After peaking in late 2020 and not budging much through the first quarter, the rate for a 40-foot container to Los Angeles from Shanghai hit $4,403 last week, the highest in Drewry World Container Index data going back to 2011. Cargo shippers on less-traveled transatlantic routes are feeling the sting, too: Rotterdam to New York surged to a record $3,500.
Container-shipping spot rates keep bouncing around at stratospheric heights and show zero signs of sliding back to earth. On some trade lanes, they’re still ascending. Case in point: The formerly sleepy Europe-U.S. trans-Atlantic route just spiked. With fallout from the Ever Given accident in the Suez Canal expected to cut container and vessel availability, .
Synopsis
Shipping firms such as South Korea’s HMM Co. are ordering more containers to address an acute shortage, with cargo stuck at warehouses longer than usual because of lockdowns and workplace restrictions.
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Maersk said it expects profit to grow as much 27% this year. HMM, South Korea’s biggest shipping line, reported its first annual operating profit in 10 years in 2020.
The world’s largest container carrier said trade disruptions that have sent freight rates soaring and overwhelmed major ports may start to ease after the first quarter, disappointing investors but signaling eventual relief for cargo shippers.
A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S Chief Executive Officer Soren Skou said the fourth quarter “was marked on the one hand by a continuous impact of the Covid-19 pandemic but also by some rewarding progress on our strategy to become the integrator of container logistics.”