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Container spot freight rates on the transpacific and Asia-Europe trades rose for the sixth consecutive week, although the sharp increases seen last week have tapered a little. As has become the norm since the Red Sea crisis led to the effective closure of the Suez Canal for most Asia-Europe and several Asia-North America east coast strings, the summer peak season has fully arrived a good month early. “The reality is that we are seeing shippers and importers booking large volumes of containers due to the ‘long way around’ the Cape, adding to transit times versus Suez, still nonexistent in reality. So there is a peak in demand against this global backdrop that has changed shippers’ strategies, with critical paths adjusted to accommodate longer transits,” one large European freight forwarder toldThe Loadstar. “Peak season has shifted and the just-in-case concept is back in favour over just-in-time. Retailers want stock in to flog it while avoiding the air freight mode and its higher costs,” he added. This week’s World Container Index (WCI) from Drewry Freight saw the rate on its Shanghai-Rotterdam leg rise 5%, to $3,768 per 40ft, while its Shanghai-Genoa route was up just 1%, to $5,139 per 40ft. Source: Drewry World Container Index With Asia-Europe sailings for the remainder of June already heavily booked, carriers are pressing ahead with another spot rate hike next week, with MSC’s new FAK (freight all kinds), for implementation on 15 June, of $6,000 per 40ft to North Europe and $6,500 per 40ft to West Mediterranean ports. These hikes would appear to have a good chance of sticking, as today’s Shanghai Containerised Freight Index (SCFI) – which records rates quoted for the forthcoming week and, as such, can indicate the direction of the following week’s WCI (as it did last week) – recorded a 15.5% % gain on the Shanghai-North Europe leg and 11.5% on Shanghai-Mediterranean. The spot rate rises are being accompanied by a variety of peak season surcharges (PSSs) on shipments under long-term contracts – CMA CGM and ONE are two carriers that have announced PSSs of $1,000–$1,200 per 40ft – also effective on 15 June. Another European forwarder toldThe Loadstar: “I can’t help thinking that some of the hype around moving into a peak season is a little manufactured by the carriers – I do think we’ve entered a peak season, just not one necessarily as strong as the carriers are making out. “We are seeing a rise in demand, and we are seeing an increase in bookings, which was expected at some point with shippers delaying for a period to see how the Middle East situation would evolve. But whether the demand is enough to justify the introduction of the high PSS levels on contracts, I’m not sure. “Carriers are blanking sailings and omitting ports in Asia, and being more controlling with allocation agreements, with some rollings,” she added. Forwarders also report some carriers reverting to the familiar tactic of “reducing allocations and then advising if overbooked that the FAK or higher tariffs will apply”. With June largely booked, the focus for carriers and customers is turning to July’s demand-supply ratio, with MSC this week unveiling a new FAK rate for 1 July of $7,500 per 40ft to North Europe and the Mediterranean. “Carriers are saying they are full for the whole of June, and some are saying they’re fully committed for July also – but then again, they would do, in the current market, to keep the pressure on rates. “This is on all key routes and lanes: TP, westbound Asia and everything in between,” a forwarder toldThe Loadstar. While pricing on the transpacific trades behaved in a similar fashion to Asia-Europe – the WCI’s Shanghai-New York rate was up 7% week on week, to $5,870 per 40ft, while the Shanghai-Los Angeles leg was up 3%, to finish at $4,683 per 40ft – new carrier rate increases announced this week for July look very hefty. The standout was a “shock-and awe” PSS announcement from CMA CGM of a $4,000 per 40ft surcharge on all Asia-US shipments from 10 July, indicating that transpacific freight costs could soar next month. US west coast forwarder Freight Right noted that US shippers were “grappling with immense confusion and marketing anxiety regarding impending July tariff change”, and explained: “The current market strain represents an early, highly compressed peak season, rather than the traditional timeline typically seen later in the year. “This elevated rate environment is expected to persist through the remainder of June and throughout July, as ocean carriers are highly unlikely to voluntarily relinquish their pricing leverage,” it said.

Air freight rates remain stubbornly high, despite a steady recovery in capacity as airlines, forwarders, and shippers adapt to a market reshaped by the Iran conflict, elevated fuel costs, and relentless demand from the AI sector. Data from Rotate shows global freighter capacity rose 4% month on month in May, and a further 2% in early June, with Asia-US networks continuing to rebuild. Cathay Cargo said today its global capacity was now “nearly back to pre-event levels”, although some Middle East disruptions remain and its Dubai and Riyadh services were still suspended. Source: Rotate Yet rates remain far above historical norms, as shown byFreightos Terminal FAX. Source: Freightos Terminal According to TAC Index, the global Baltic Air Freight Index eased just 2.1% over the four weeks to 1 June, leaving it still 32.7% higher than a year ago. The index remained up 33.4% year on year in the first week of June, despite signs of stabilisation. WorldACD data highlights the market imbalance: global tonnage growth slowed to just 3% year on year in May, yet average rates remained 36% above last year’s levels. The disconnect suggests that, while capacity is returning, the market is still operating with significant constraints. “There’s still 30% of those carriers’ capacity not back in the market,” Morrison Express CEO Asok Kumar toldThe Loadstar, referring to Gulf carriers affected by the conflict. “Qatar, Emirates, Etihad – they’re all major cargo carriers, so it still has an impact from a capacity standpoint.” He added that while airlines had restored much of their lift, the market had not fully normalised. “Up to 70% of it has come back,” he said, noting that airlines had also added direct capacity to compensate for reduced Middle East connectivity. The result is a market no longer in crisis mode, but remaining significantly more expensive than before the outbreak of the conflict. Fuel still a key factor TAC noted that jet fuel prices fell nearly 25% between April and May, helping ease some pressure on rates. However, fuel costs remain more than 57% above last year’s average. Hong Kong fuel surcharges tell a similar story. Cathay Cargo has reduced its long-haul fuel surcharge by around 14% for the second half of June, from HK$11.8 (US$1.50) per kg to HK$10.1 per kg. While that is almost 46% below the peak reached in April, it remains more than three times higher than pre-conflict levels. “The big issue remains the price of oil, and jet fuel in particular,” said Cathay Cargo’s head of cargo sales Hong Kong and Greater Bay Area, Frank Yau. And Mr Kumar said the volatility was creating challenges for shippers. “Customers are not able to properly forecast their costs because of this,” he said. “It brings a lot of uncertainty.” While the Iran conflict continues to shape market conditions, demand remains remarkably resilient, particularly in technology supply chains. WorldACD said Asia Pacific chargeable weight was up 8% year to date, while rates to Europe and the US remained 39% and 36% higher year on year, respectively. Behind much of that demand is the continued build-out of AI infrastructure. Taiwan-based Mr Kumar said semiconductor manufacturers, memory producers, and equipment makers continued to report full orderbooks stretching years into the future. “Some are talking about being booked out until end of next year, some even until end of 2028,” he said. “Many are saying this will continue till 2030.The one vertical market that’s just showing exceptional growth is AI.” The boom is supporting strong intra-Asia and transpacific flows.The strength of AI-related cargo is also helping explain why rates have remained elevated even as overall volume growth has moderated. TAC’s Index showed Asia-origin pricing continuing to outperform in May, particularly on transpacific lanes, supported by semiconductor and technology shipments. Nevertheless, there are growing signs that the frantic repricing seen in March and April has ended. WorldACD reported global chargeable weight fell 9% week on week at the end of May, largely due to holiday effects, including Memorial Day, Pentecost, and Eid al-Adha. Yet average rates still rose 2%, underlining the market’s continuing sensitivity to capacity constraints. For now, most industry participants appear to agree that the market has stabilised at a higher level rather than returned to normal. Cathay said capacity was recovering and rates had begun to soften, while TAC described May as a period in which airlines and shippers stopped repricing risk every week and, instead, learned to operate within a new set of constraints. Mr Kumar believes that, eventually, market fundamentals will prevail. “If things just revert to where they were before the war started, the market dynamics will correct themselves,” he said. “The rates cannot stay at elevated levels.” For now, however, a combination of incomplete capacity recovery, elevated fuel costs, and insatiable demand for AI-related cargo appears sufficient to keep air freight pricing well above historical norms.

Despite another turbulent contract season, most major US shippers continue to favour annual ocean freight agreements over shorter-term or index-linked alternatives, according to industry executives. Stephanie Loomis, head of procurement, pricing and commercial relations, ocean product, at Noatum Logistics, toldThe Loadstarthis year’s transpacific eastbound contracting cycle had been the most challenging of her career. “By far, in my 30-plus-year career, the most complicated and confusing transpacific eastbound contract season,” she said. “We’ve had decades of it being rather easy to contract, in the sense that carriers are pretty aligned in pricing structures and what a base rate from one lane to another is, and baf – although it has always fluctuated quarterly – has not had dramatic impacts on the overall cost lane by lane or region by region. “Now, of course, that’s been completely thrown out the window. You’ve got very different methodologies, carrier by carrier; some are implementing these high emergency fuel surcharges, some want to change their bunker monthly.” Ms Loomis said many shippers still preferred annual-rate tenders, but calculating those rates had become significantly more complex amid diverging carrier pricing models. She added: “I am hearing in the market that there are a lot of shippers that are worried about the potential if the war were to finally really end, if we see an opening of the Strait of Hormuz – that will change dramatically the capacity and the vessel routings, and that could impact spot rates, so I have heard more shippers and importers looking at shorter-term deals, six months more indexing.” However, she noted that the “big BCOs in the United States”, for the most part, remained committed to annual contracts. That view was echoed by Mark Chadwick, president of the Global Shippers’ Association (GSA), speaking toThe Loadstaron the sidelines of TIACA’s Executive Summit in Warsaw. In ocean freight, he argued, larger cargo owners still had the leverage to secure long-term arrangements. “If you’re a big enough shipper,” he said, “you can impose one-year rates and avoid peak season surcharges and all this other stuff.” Mr Chadwick acknowledged that exceptional market events required flexibility. “If there’s a massive thing happens, like when the Suez Canal was kind of closed down, there has to be some flexibility,” he said. “We’re still going for one-year rates. If you listen to the consultants, everybody should be doing short-term rate negotiations, but we’re not really seeing that. We’ve seen that even through turbulent times, one-year rates, as long as you’re open to some flexibility, it pays off.” The same principle increasingly applies to air cargo procurement. “That’s completely absurd now,” Mr Chadwick said of the two-year airfreight contracts the GSA once negotiated. “We try and do one-year fixed rates, and then in situations like at the moment, if there’s a sustained and significant change in the market, we’ll have discussions, and we’ll try to make some adjustments. When the ecommerce bubble really kind of skyrocketed the rates, we had to have discussions on China outbound, but other than that, we try and keep to one-year rates.” Despite persistent volatility across both ocean and air freight markets, index-linked contracts remain uncommon. “Agreeing on which index is the first problem,” Mr Chadwick explained. “The carriers are interested in indexing when it’s in their favour, and when it’s not, then they just don’t want to touch it. And we know there are companies out there that index, but whenever we approach the carriers, they’ve said they’d rather carry on as they are. They’re not coming to us offering index solutions.” He added that both carriers and shippers often had commercial reasons to avoid strict index-based pricing. “If carriers see that they can make a killing in the market, they might not want to wait for the index to tell them they can,” he said, while shippers may be able to secure rates below index levels from carriers pursuing market share. Instead, Mr Chadwick suggested, indices could serve as market indicators rather than automatic pricing mechanisms. “One thing I propose for air freight is, instead of indexing and moving your price based on the index, an index that indicates a trend at which you trigger a discussion,” he said. “Like we saw with the China outbound in the ecommerce peak, all of the indices showed that rates were through the roof. That gave us the kind of the openness to have a conversation to talk about that price, rather than us being tied to ‘if it goes in 10% your rates go up 10%’.”

European automakers and their logistics services providers are navigating a period of upheaval and structural change, according to industry and research sources interviewed byThe Loadstar. Hit hard by US tariff hikes, a sizeable chunk of OEM premium export business has disappeared, while on the home front, Chinese rivals are not only shipping vehicles to the EU in ever-increasing numbers, but are accelerating plans to operate local production facilities in the bloc. “The European automotive industry is facing a perfect storm of challenges. The market remains broadly flat, although there are notable exceptions. Spain and Poland continue to outperform most other European markets and are among the few countries still delivering meaningful growth,” said Frank Schnelle, executive director of the Association of European Vehicle Logistics (ECG). “However, overall, the industry is having to deal with significant overcapacity. This is not only a European issue, but a global one. In China, the utilisation rate of production facilities is below 50%. In Europe, it is below 80%, we understand.” Export markets have weakened considerably, with EU car shipments to the US falling approximately 13.5% last year, to around 668,000 vehicles, figures from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association reveal. And more recent data shows the pace of decline went up a couple of gears in January and February, year on year. “The decline in EU exports to China has been even more notable, having been one of the most important markets for European vehicle manufacturers,” Mr Schnelle said. “Concurrently, Europe is experiencing a sizeable increase in vehicle imports from China, fundamentally changing the balance between export and import flows” The arrival of Chinese brands “is definitely reshaping the market composition in automotive logistics”, noted Rico Luman, senior sector economist, transport & logistics, at Dutch bank ING. “They are a driver of electrification, and this also has an impact on automotive logistics in terms of the weight of vehicles and the safety aspects,” he toldThe Loadstar. “We know the incumbent European car industry has significant excess capacity, so collaboration with Chinese players could absorb some of it. At the same time, sales of new cars still hover 10% to 15% lower than pre-pandemic. Affordable EVs could push up new car sales, but we’re not there yet,” he added. On exports, he said: “Emerging export markets, such as Latin America, are on the rise, while new EU trade agreements with India, Indonesia, and Australia offer new, longer-term growth opportunities.” Returning to imports, having to handle these in greater quantities represents logistical challenges, as they typically require substantially more storage capacity than vehicles for export, explained Mr Schnelle. “As a rule of thumb, imported vehicles require roughly twice the storage space. “They generally remain in compounds longer, require additional processing and distribution activities and create more complex inventory management challenges, he added. .“Consequently, ports and inland compounds across Europe are expanding storage capacity. The strong increase in imports from China is again creating significant demand for storage space across the network.” He also signalled growing concern that imported vehicle volumes may exceed the pace at which they could be sold on the European market – “congestion builds throughout the supply chain and pressure on available storage capacity increases further”, he said. Mr Schnelle also highlighted the increasing number of vehicles being transported in containers. “Generally not the ideal solution for finished vehicle logistics,” he noted. “Box terminals are typically not integrated into automotive logistics networks in the same way as dedicated vehicle terminals. They are disconnected from vehicle storage, technical processing, and distribution activities, creating inefficiencies and increasing the risk of transport damage.” Turning to the impact of the conflict in the Middle East and the resulting surge in fuel prices, he noted: “Fortunately, most transport contracts today contain fuel adjustment mechanisms. However, many of these clauses only take effect after up to three months. “For many smaller transport companies, this creates a significant cash flow challenge, as they must absorb the increased fuel costs before compensation mechanisms apply. ECG has therefore advocated for shorter adjustment cycles. Otherwise, there is a real risk that transport capacity will leave the market, which is clearly not in the interest of vehicle manufacturers.” The trade body has been encouraged to see that a number of OEMs have recognised this challenge and adjusted their mechanisms accordingly. This has helped protect capacity and maintain stability across parts of the finished vehicle logistics sector. More broadly, ECG members are also dealing with increasing sustainability requirements, investment needs related to digitalisation and decarbonisation, and a general lack of predictability in vehicle production and trade flows, “making planning and investment decisions increasingly difficult”. Finally, have these difficult market conditions led to European automakers reducing spend on transport and logistics costs? “That’s definitely what we’ve seen recently, but at the same time, reliable logistics and supply chains have become a boardroom theme,” Mr Luman said. “Resilience is key, and this also comes with additional services, such as storage in ports. In any case, freight rates have gone up following the hostilities in the Gulf.”

Containership newbuilding orders this week have been dominated by 6,000 teu-plus ships, but interest in feeder vessels remained strong. French line CMA CGM added to its orderbook of 6,000 teu ships, after contracting eight at Hengli Heavy Industries for delivery in 2028. Alphaliner notes CMA CGM already operates six ships of this type, two owned and four chartered from Belgian tonnage provider CMB.Tech. Eastern Pacific Shipping has ordered a 6,000 teu pair, also from Hengli, reportedly for charter to CMA CGM, adding to four ordered earlier, also to be fixed to the French line. Global Ship Lease has confirmed orders for ten 6,200 teu ships at Taizhou Sanfu Ship Engineering for delivery between 2028 and 2030. It is likely that GSL has a charter lined up, although details have not been released. The price of a 6,000 teu ship is around $90m, while feeder vessels in the 1,100 teu to 1,900 teu bracket cost between $28m and $35m. Constantine Baack, boss of non-operating shipowner MPC Container Ships, which specialises in smaller vessels, said during the recent Q1 earnings call that high oil prices and a relatively low orderbook were encouraging investment in new ships. The orderbook-to-fleet ratio of feeder vessels is just 18% of the active fleet, and Linerlytica has reported a number of new feeder vessel orders. Hong Kong-registered Synelysia ordered four 1,900 teu ships at Zhejiang Xinle Shipbuilding, reportedly for delivery in 2028; Greek owner Euroseas has exercised options for two more 1,781 teu ships at Nantong CIMC Sinopacific; and two 1,100 teu ships were ordered by an unknown company at Yangzi Hongyuan Shipbuilding. “While overall contracting activity remains moderate, we continue to see firm projects in both the mid-size and larger segments, with a number of orders expected to firm up before the summer holidays,” reported MB Shipbrokers.