More shipping lines are moving to push up rates on the Asia-Europe trade.
Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) will hike freight rates by US$200 per container for cargo moving from North Europe to Asia from 15 February.
And Danish container carrier Maersk Line, the world’s biggest, is raising its rate on the Asia-Europe lane by $775 from 1 March.
More shipping lines are moving to push up rates on the Asia-Europe trade.
Hong Kong-based Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) will hike freight rates by US$200 per container for cargo moving from North Europe to Asia from 15 February.
And Danish container carrier Maersk Line, the world’s biggest, is raising its rate on the Asia-Europe lane by $775 from 1 March.
IFW reported last week that ocean carriers were serious about getting rates up. Hapag-Lloyd has announced an increase of $750 per teu from East Asia (excluding Japan) to Europe, targeted for 1 March.
And CMA CGM has announced increases on most trades between February and March, according to shipping industry sources.
However, analysts have said the recent downward trend for global freight rates won’t improve much until 2014, despite lines announcing increases.
A better balance between new capacity and demand in 2014 should lead to a modest recovery, according to CIMB in Hong Kong.
Following a record number of deliveries last year, the number of cargo vessels under construction is equivalent to about one-third of the existing global fleet, CIMB’s analysts said on Monday.
They said there was little that shipping lines could do to improve the situation in the short term, adding that they “did not expect a huge volume of [vessel] demolitions,
Discussion about this post