Sport Container freight rates have spiked to as much as 42% for major routes through Asia following the bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping.
Rate assessment has increased to $1,674 per 40ft container on the Shanghai-Los Angeles route, and by 19% to $2,151 on the Shanghai-New York route and by 39% to $1,826 on the Shanghai-Rotterdam route.
Richard Heath, General Manager of WCI, said: “Unpredictable freight rates are not new phenomenon in the container industry; however, a major upheaval of supply like this is likely to cause extreme short-term price volatility.
“Shippers should expect increasing freight costs and tight allocation for several weeks at least.”
Philip Damas, Director at Drewry, said: “The Hanjin bankruptcy means a shock to the market – some of our shipper customers are making contingency plans and asked us to assess the impact of this on their supply chains.”
Finding a way of getting your cargo out of the Hanjin vessels that have been seized and the ports at which cargo has been compulsorily removed is particularly difficult as it is peak shipping season, and is becoming more and more costly.
The supply chain director of a major German beneficial cargo owner told IHS: “It’s complete chaos, I now have to buy my containers out of Hamburg for a ridiculous price. But it all keeps changing.
“For instance, yesterday I could get a Hanjin container out of a European port by paying only the terminal handling charges.
“Then last night another European terminal guy demanded to be paid for the ship mooring, the lashings, putting the boxes in a stack, the bunkers and all the sort of things Hanjin would normally pay for. It went up from EUR300 [$335] to EUR800 [$895] overnight.”
