Facing the traditional peak shipping season in June, will the phenomenon of “hard to find a box” reappear? Will port congestion change? IHS MARKIT analysts believe that the continued deterioration of the supply chain has led to continued congestion in many ports around the world and low return rates of containers back to Asia, making companies’ demand for containers far outpacing capacity.

Although the reports of “high-priced sea freight” have weakened, the sea freight has not fallen back to the level before the epidemic in 2019, and is still at a high level for adjustment and loading. According to the global container freight index provided by the Baltic Shipping Exchange and Freightos, as of the 3rd, the shipping price from China/East Asia to the west coast of North America was US$10,076/40-foot equivalent container (FEU).

Maersk’s performance data, which recently released its earnings report, shows that high freight rates allow shipping companies to still enjoy high freight rate dividends. Maersk’s first-quarter 2022 results showed earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of $9.2 billion, handily beating the fourth-quarter 2021 record of $7.99 billion. Amid high returns, carriers are ramping up efforts to “stock up” boxes to deal with supply chain disruptions and continue to place generous container ship orders. For example, in the second quarter of this year, Hapag-Lloyd added 50,000 containers to its fleet to address container availability issues. According to data from ship broker Braemar ACM, as of May 1 this year, the global newly built container ship capacity has reached 7.5 million 20-foot equivalent containers (TEU), and the order capacity accounts for more than 30% of the existing global capacity. In the Nordic region, several major container ports are facing severe congestion, with terminal yard densities up to 95%. Maersk’s Asia-Pacific market update released this week pointed out that the ports of Rotterdam and Bremerhaven are the most congested Nordic ports, and the large and continuous operational disruptions have caused ships to wait too long, affecting the return to the Asia-Pacific region.

Hapag-Lloyd said in its latest update on European operations and customer service that the yard occupancy rate at the Port of Hamburg’s Altenwerder (CTA) container terminal has reached 91% due to the slowdown in the unloading of imported heavy container ships and the slowdown in the pickup of imported containers. Congestion in Hamburg is worsening, with container ships having to wait two weeks to enter the port, according to Germany’s Die Welt. Moreover, it is expected that from today (June 7) local time in Germany, Verdi, Germany’s largest service industry union, will launch a strike, further aggravating the congestion at the port of Hamburg.

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