The Shanghai container market suggests that Asia-Europe freight rates may see further declines in 2025, following a peak observed recently. This was reported by Container-News.
Lately, the Shanghai Containerised Freight Index (SCFI) indicated a 2% decrease in the Shanghai-North Europe rate from the previous week, landing at US$4,907 per TEU. This rate, however, remains significantly higher than the US$947 per TEU recorded a year ago.
Linerlytica's report on August 6 highlighted that near-term contracts led the decline for most of last week before longer-dated contracts were impacted by fears of a US recession.
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Linerlytica commented, 'Based on the latest closing prices, the futures market is pricing in a 4.46% decline each week for the next three weeks until the end of August, followed by a 4.49% decline each week for the subsequent nine weeks until the end of October. Rates are expected to continue falling through 2025. Despite rates holding up better than the Asia-US West Coast and Asia-Mediterranean rates, sentiment has turned negative, and carriers' rate quotations are starting to drop, indicating that rates have peaked.'
Despite the weakening futures, Linerlytica noted that carriers still hold a strong position. Overall capacity to North Europe remains limited, with the 13-week moving average down 3.4% compared to last year, despite recent capacity additions.
Source: www.container-news.com