A new report has identified Asia-Europe container freight declining as port congestion in Asia pushes carriers back toward the Suez Canal.
According to the recent Sogese’s September Europe Container Market Update, the Shanghai-Genoa rate currently sits at US$4,368 (c. £3,222) per 40ft container, down 10% week on week, while Shanghai-Rotterdam fell 5% to $4,092 (c. £3,019).
Blank sailings on the Asia-Europe trade are set to drop from four to one next week, an early sign of capacity returning to the market.
CEO of Sogese S.r.l Andrea Monti said: “The container market is becoming increasingly fragmented by trade corridor, with freight rates, cargo demand and available capacity moving in different directions across major routes.
“Asia-Europe rates have started to soften from their mid-year highs while transpacific markets remain firmer, prompting carriers to adjust individual services and vessel deployments rather than manage capacity uniformly across their networks.”
Asian port congestion has reached 4.3 million TEU, according to Linerlytica data, higher than the 4.0 million TEU stranded at the peak of the pandemic.
Cape of Good Hope diversions are absorbing between 5% and 7% of global container capacity, roughly 1.7 to 2.4 million TEU. MSC, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have all announced partial returns to Suez in recent weeks.
Sogese’s base case for the coming months is a gradual, congestion-driven return to Suez that releases effective capacity into the Asia-Europe market faster than carriers can absorb it through blank sailings alone.
Additionally, Italian transshipment volumes are likely to remain under pressure as long as Mediterranean routing decisions continue to favour ports with greater scale.
Monti adds: “Our own port data and the national picture are both accurate, and they are telling two different parts of the same story.
“The regional numbers show resilience in gateway cargo. The national numbers show how much of Italy’s position in Mediterranean routing is being decided somewhere else.”
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