Container shipping: Rates, capacity and reliability?

The new year has started with a flurry of news from the container shipping arena that has been of interest to the U-Freight Group with our comprehensive portfolio of international container shipping services for both LCL and FCL import and export cargoes.

Seatrade Maritime’s website reported that spot container rates were on the rise in the final days of 2024 and start of 2025 as a possible US East Coast port strike looms and the threat of tariffs from incoming US President Trump.

The Drewry World Container (WCI) posted on 2 January was up 3% at USD3,905 per feu driven by the transpacific trade to both US West and East Coasts from Asia. Meanwhile the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) was up 1.8% on 3 January 2025 over 27 December 2024 at 2,505.7 points.

Meanwhile that same website carries a report that in its final report on the container shipping trades of 2024, consultancy Alphaliner has forecast that there will be no overcapacity challenges in the near-term as carriers seek to plug gaps in their services.

According to Alphaliner’s analysis the container fleet increased by nearly 3 million teu last year, or by 10.6%, with some 59% of this new capacity deployed on the Asia to Europe trade which had diverted around the Cape of Good Hope.

Capacity on the European trades increased by 31% overall by the end of the year, but according to Alphaliner more tonnage is needed to plug the remaining gaps in the Asia to Europe trades.

You can read the full articles at the following links:

https://tinyurl.com/4577sp4e

https://tinyurl.com/buy526fx

Then, Greece’s Container News publication reports that global liner schedule reliability improved by 4.1 percentage points month over month, reaching 54.8 per cent in November – the highest level of reliability in 2024 so far.

However, despite this improvement, schedule reliability has generally remained within the 50 per cent-55 per cent range throughout the year, it adds.

The publication added that the average delay for late vessel arrivals also improved, decreasing by 0.43 days month on month to 5.41 days. Despite this progress, the delay figure remains the second highest for November on record, surpassed only by the pandemic peak in 2021.

The data was contained in Sea-Intelligence’s issue 160 of its Global Liner Performance (GLP) report, which provides detailed insights into schedule reliability across 34 trade lanes and over 60 carriers.

The full article can be read here: https://tinyurl.com/2p9ssvmn

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