How's the Freight Market in Sep - Oct 2023?

Due to the Mid-Autumn Festival and National holidays in China (September 29th to October 6th), plus quarter-end demand in September, a further rate increase and capacity shortage for Intra-Asia, Asia-to-US, and Asia-to-Europe are anticipated.

The counter-terrorism operation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region has affected European airlines on the routes between Europe and Northeast Asian countries. Chinese airline flights passing through Russian airspace on China-Europe routes are not yet affected. However, this could further tighten capacity to Europe and increase rates.

Apple's launch of new products has also increased charter flights and driven up rates.

Cargolux suspended all flights for two days, impacting Xiamen, Shanghai, Zhengzhou, and Hong Kong. This has tightened capacity to Europe and the US, and increased rates.

Alphaliner released its ranking of the top 30 container ports for the first half of 2023, showing that leading European and US ports have experienced a decline in container throughput across the board, ranging from 5% to 25%. In contrast, Chinese ports performed better with a year-over-year growth of 4.8%.

Despite a 21% year-over-year decline in US imports from Asia in the first eight months of 2023, ocean carriers have successfully driven up freight rates on the Transpacific Eastbound (TPEB) trade lane since early July. This success is largely due to massive blank sailings.

Sea-Intelligence reported that ocean carriers plan to remove 14% of redundant capacity on the Transpacific Eastbound (TPEB) trade lane in October, almost double the amount removed in September. The Golden Week capacity cut for TPEB alone will jump as high as 30% during weeks 40-42.