China export chaos travels on to European export...

Dear valued customer,

With the celebration of the Lunar New Year providing some relieve to exporters in Asia, the global container trade pain point gravitated towards European exports. A number of carriers have introduced a full booking stop to several of destinations amongst others South America and North America.

For the airfreight market, we remain optimistic that it will continue its steady course towards normalization. At the moment in particular exports ex Asia is as expected experienced a surge in volumes ahead of Lunar New Year. As predicted, shippers and consignees scrambled to ensure most critical shipments were expedited before to the close-down of factories.

Summing up for the ocean freight market, the expected normalization will take time, and volatility remains on the menu despite ocean carriers scrambling to improve the situation.

As in the case of the chaos seen in Asia, it is a combination of shortage of container equipment, congested terminals and a sustained demand being significantly higher than expected causing the challenges. Subsequently, an array of surcharges has followed from most carriers with premium and Peak Season surcharges required to guarantee the load of containers.

Adding to the narrative that the global challenges will remain for some while still are comments from Hapag Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben-Jansen made during a recent press conference commenting that “it will hopefully be in Q2 or maybe the start of Q3 we see a normalization”.

Take a special note to the traffic lights, where significant changes are noticeable like export ex Europe and note that placing bookings well in advance will give us the opportunity to research all potential options in the market.

The transport industry is still facing an untidy market, where the key to success is through our transparency dialogue with you which we encourage you to continue.

All information is given to the best of our knowledge and is prone to change.