Two indices measuring spot rates for container shipping are telling two very different stories.
Container freight rates had been on the decline for several weeks, with both the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index, produced by the Shanghai Shipping Exchange, and Drewry’s World Container Index playing out in similar patterns. Seasonal demand for container shipping tends to grow in the lead up to the Lunar New Year, during which factories across Asia shut down, and then subside following the restocking of inventories for the first quarter.
But after several weeks of sequential losses, the composite SCFI, which measures spot rates on 13 different trades between Shanghai and the rest of the world, rebounded 12.8 percent to a reading of 760.67 last week.
According to the SCFI, rates from Shanghai to Europe spiked 32.5 percent from the previous week, from $584 per TEU to $774 per TEU, while rates from Shanghai to the Mediterranean grew 15.5 percent, from $601 per TEU to $694 per TEU.
Rates from Shanghai to the U.S. West Coast likewise jumped 21.8 percent, from $1,152 per FEU to $1,403 per FEU, while rates to the U.S. East Coast ticked up 8.1 percent, from $2,193 per FEU to $2,371 per FEU.
Despite the week-over-week growth, however, the index is currently still down 16.3 percent from a reading of 909.25 at this time last year.
And despite the rebound in the SCFI, the composite WCI continued trending in the opposite direction, falling another 1.9 percent last week compared with the prior week and 19 percent on a year-over-year basis.
Drewry further noted that at $1,361 per FEU, the average composite WCI through the first portion of the 2018 calendar year is down $92 per FEU (5.1 percent) from the five-year average for the index of $1,461 per FEU.
On an individual trade lane level, pricing from Shanghai to Rotterdam fell only 1 percent from the previous week to $1,142 per FEU but were down 27 percent from the same week a year ago, according to the WCI.
Eastbound transpacific rates from Shanghai to Los Angeles slipped 4 percent from the previous week and 12 percent year-over-year to $1,164 per FEU, while pricing from Shanghai to New York slid 4 percent week-over-week but was still up 1 percent from the same 2017 period at $2,309.