Recently, there are signs that the freight rate in the container shipping market has reached its peak, and the backlog in major ports in the world will be improved.

The latest monthly data from sea intelligence shows that the reliability of shipping schedule is continuously improving in the past three months.

Although the current shipping schedule reliability is still much lower than that before covid-19, it has exceeded the average level of the whole year of 2021, only about 10% behind that of December 2020.

"This is the second time since covid-19 began that the reliability of shipping schedule has continuously increased." Alan Murphy, CEO of sea intelligence, pointed out:. "The reliability in July 2022 increased by 0.5 percentage points over the previous month."

According to the analysis of more than 60 carriers operating on 34 different trade routes, sea Intelligence reported that the overall reliability of shipping schedule reached 40.5% in July, and exceeded 40% for the first time in 15 months.

In the whole year of 2021, the average shipping schedule reliability of the shipping industry was slightly lower than 36%. With the recent improvement, after falling to a historical low of 30% in January 2022, the shipping schedule reliability in 2022 has returned to the average level.

"So far this year, the average delay time of ships has been decreasing." Murphy points out. "In July 2022, the average delay time of ships decreased by 0.09 days month on month, which means that the delay time is now less than 7 days, which is an improvement over 2021."

However, the overall flag reliability of major carriers is still lower than the overall average level in the industry.

In July, the average schedule reliability of the top 14 shipping companies was slightly lower than 37%. Maersk still ranks first with 48% of the overall shipping schedule reliability, while Delta and EVA are the other two shipping companies with higher than the industry average shipping schedule reliability.

In July, carriers in Asia performed better. Evergreen jumped from the bottom of the list to the second place with 44% reliability of shipping schedule. Wanhai, HMM, Taiping Shipping Co., Ltd. (PIL), COSCO and OOCL also showed strong improvement.

Shipping companies are under pressure to renegotiate contract freight rates

Zhang Shaofeng, business operation officer of Yangming shipping, said that with the drop of spot freight rates, carriers are under pressure from shippers to renegotiate contract freight rates.

Yangming shipping makes negotiations or amendments to different degrees for different customers, including providing short-term preferential prices.

At present, the spot price of the US west line has been revised down to $3500-3900, and the US east line is more than twice that of the US west line. Compared with the situation before the epidemic, the shipping company's profits are still very good.

The rapid drop in freight rates mainly reflects the sharp drop in demand, coupled with the impact of the epidemic, many shippers have placed excessive orders.

With the recovery of the supply chain, importers have a high degree of control over inventory, and orders will decrease. The pressure of inventory digestion still exists. After inventory digestion, subsequent orders will slowly increase.