SCFI freight rates ended its 2 month winning streak as container freight rates eased for the first time since July ahead of China’s Golden Week holidays. Cargo volumes have already started to drop with last week’s mid-Autumn festival holidays across the Far East and carriers start to offer rate discounts for October shipments.
The outlook remains positive, with EC freight futures still projecting freight rates to rebound in November and December while containership charter rates remain very firm across all size segments even as new ship orders continue to pile up despite the orderbook reaching a record high at 15.6m TEU. The China-US trade accord following last week’s summit will see tariffs reduced on $30Bn of goods from each country. Chinese container exports to the US have already rebounded strongly since May following the removal of the IEEPA tariffs, fueling the sharp rise in Transpacific freight rates that have jumped by more than 180% in the last 5 months. Port congestion has compounded the sharp rise in freight rates and remains high with 3.76m TEU of vessel capacity still tied up accounting for 10.9% of the current fleet.
Johnson Leung
Containerships return en masse to Suez route
Over 140 containerships with a total capacity of more than 2m TEU have returned to the Suez route since May, as more carriers make the switch from the Cape route. Last week marked the busiest week for containership transits through the Suez Canal since 2024 as 30 ships of over 4,000 teu passed through the Canal. After 9 eastbound voyages scheduled via the Suez Canal since mid September, COSCO will make its first westbound voyage through the Suez in more than 2 years with the 24,188 teu OOCL SPAIN on the AEU1/LL1 service on 4 October.
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