Hardly any seafreight capacity to Asia
“The tense situation is also the result of the extensive capacity reductions around the Chinese New Year. The stop of certain departures/services over a certain period, is a respond to the usual drop in demand following the annual holidays”, DSV Air & Sea Germany informed on its website.
Moreover, the ongoing consolidation in the shipping market has led to a realignment of alliances. In the weeks to come, services, ships, terminals and equipment will be adjusted to the future partner structures.
The combination of capacity reductions and reorganised services and hardware is leading to a situation where the vessels towards the Middle East/India and Asia are fully booked for weeks, and individual shipowners stopped accepting bookings completely until the end of April.
Currently shipowners use the current situation for drastic price adjustments. Every day news are released on short notice rate adjustments, which all have the same goal: to increase the freight rates on the Europe-Asia trade lanes. However, there is no uniform approach on the part of the shipping companies.
In addition to a shift towards rail transport, air freight is currently used as an alternative to the scarce ship capacities to Asia. However, the demand for shipping capacity is also very high in Central Europe, in particular for shipments to the Far East. As a result of this high capacity utilisation, rates are soaring. Given the strong demand, it is currently difficult to place short-term bookings – particularly the capacity on shipping lines to Shanghai is scarce.
Currently no clear end of the difficult market situation is reported. To safe quotas, DSV Air & Sea Germany recommends to communicate sustainable planning figures for the coming months already in advance.