Long-term ocean freight rates fall by almost 50% in key pricing benchmark across last three months - Xeneta
The carrier industry took another major hit in June, with the latest data from Xeneta’s Shipping Index (XSI®) showing a decline of 9.4% in global long-term shipping rates. Following on the heels of a 27.5% collapse in May, and a 10.3% fall in April, contracted rates have now shed 47.2% of their value in the last three months alone, and 51.7% over the course of 2023.
Xeneta’s real-time data, crowd-sourced from leading global shippers, shows falls in the prices of valid long-term contracts across all key trading corridors. The uniform declines have now pushed the XSI® to a 23-month low.
The Far East export benchmark, a key link in the global supply chain, has steeply declined since December 2022, shedding 65.3% of its value. Meanwhile, the US import sub-index is down 56.3% for the year, with the European import benchmark declining 46.2%. The opposing European export figure fared only slightly better, down 38.3%.
China to North Europe and Indian West Coast & Pakistan to North Europe are two trades that have racked up total declines of more than 70% since the end of last year. Taiwan to the Mediterranean and Taiwan to North Europe have also plummeted from the heights of 2022, with falls of 65.5% for 2023 to date.
The trade lane from South America East Coast to China is up by 11% month-on-month.
Xeneta’s in-depth analysis shows a decline in all import and export benchmark figures for all regions. In Europe, the import sub-index hit a 24-month low point, falling 9.4% since May, while the export figure dropped for the third consecutive month, declining 5.1%. The XSI® for Far East exports lost 13.9% of its value in June and has now slumped by 69.5% since its peak last year. The back-haul regional import trade has experienced a more muted decline, with a fall of 6.7% in June and 35.4% for the year to date.
The story continues on the US sub-indexes, with an 11% drop on the import benchmark pushing it to an 18-month low. The export back-haul figure recorded a 4.3% fall.
The US container exports increased for the for the first four months of the year, by 1.8% year-on-year, while inbound container demand for Europe ‘only’ declined by 1.1% for the same period.
Xeneta is the leading ocean and air freight rate benchmarking and market analytics platform transforming the shipping and logistics industry. Xeneta’s powerful reporting and analytics platform provides liner-shipping stakeholders the data they need to understand current and historical market behavior – reporting live on market average and low/high movements for both short and long-term contracts. Xeneta’s data is comprised of over 350 million contracted container and air freight rates and covers over 160,000 global ocean trade routes and over 40,000 airport-airport connections. Xeneta is a privately held company with headquarters in Oslo, Norway and regional offices in New York and Hamburg.
