Since the beginning of this year, how fast has the freight rate of sea and land transportation soared? Recently, the Baltic Shipping Association issued a market report stating that due to the complexity of the epidemic, this year's shipping market did not follow the past low and peak seasons. On the contrary, since the second half of this year, the container freight market has been leaping forward.
　　According to Instto Research's research and analysis, some popular routes from China to European and American ports have tripled the container freight rate since the beginning of the year, and the increase continues. On December 4, the Shanghai Shipping Exchange's comprehensive freight rate index for export containers was 2129.26 points, an increase of 4.0% over the previous period, which set a new high since the financial crisis. During the same period, the China Export Container Comprehensive Freight Index also climbed to 1323.83, an increase of 10.4% from the previous period (November 27), and the growth rate continued.
　　 The upstream, middle and lower reaches of the shipping industry did not expect this collective reversal in the industry. Originally affected by the epidemic, analysts at the beginning of this year believed that this year's container shipping market might lose tens of billions of dollars, but in reality, this has not happened. Beginning in June, the surge in demand in Europe and the United States, coupled with the low efficiency of European and American ports caused by the epidemic, has directly led to this unprecedented container congestion. "
　　In the initial stage of the global pandemic this year, Instto Research predicts that the overall shipping industry will face losses of up to 23 billion U.S. dollars this year. But the latest forecast shows that the shipping industry will make a profit of 14 billion US dollars this year. Among them, the world's top container shipping companies are expected to achieve billions of dollars in operating profits in 2020, "this will be the highest level in eight years." From huge losses to unexpected profits, this reversal is unique in the 64-year history of the container shipping industry.
At the time when container freight rates are booming, Mr. Ito, the chief analyst of Instto Research, believes that both the basic ocean freight rate and the container price have reached a high point, and there should not be much room for subsequent substantial increases. "But it should be better in the future. Maintaining a relatively high level for a long period of time will be subject to fluctuations in various market and policy factors during the period, such as the upcoming year-end shipment peak and the adjustment of the entry and capacity of some new containers after the first quarter of next year."
　　In the future, shipping companies will be more proactive and flexible in adopting surcharges to respond to market changes and adjust freight rates flexibly without adjusting the basic freight rates.

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　　 In this unprecedented container supply chain crisis, large container leasing companies have seen business opportunities, and they have said that demand will continue to be strong in the coming months; orders from the world's largest container manufacturers are also flooding in.
　　 Mr. Ito mentioned that now we have entered an era where "who owns the container has the initiative". Some of the logistics companies in the industry began to deploy in September. After the scheduled March, the first batch of self-owned containers finally rolled off the line a few days ago.
Mr. Ito said that "accelerating container rotation" and "expanding production capacity" are absolutely positive for the container manufacturing industry and the foreign trade industry, but he also reminded not to be too optimistic about investing in containers, and to guard against the bubbles in it, "how much to build? How to expand? These are all issues that need to be resolved in the next step." He is bearish on long-term value investment. “If the situation stabilizes next year, there will be a surplus of containers.” In his view, the current global container shortage is only a relative shortage, or a structural shortage, rather than an absolute shortage. Therefore, regarding the expansion of production capacity, he said that this is a good thing, but we must not blindly expand.
　　 In addition to increasing the production capacity of containers, at present, many container shipping companies are actively deploying empty containers back to China, Vietnam and other Asian countries with strong export demand. For example, many shipping companies have made it clear that they will not take back their cargo as much as possible and speed up the return to Asian ports.
　　 In addition, due to the high freight rates of container ships, some liner companies have had to find multi-purpose vessels to cope with the extraordinary demand and high freight rates on the container shipping routes. The lack of online container ships in the chartering market has forced some shipping companies to enter the multi-purpose market to find capacity to meet their needs. The target is ships with good speed and high container capacity. For example, multi-purpose dry cargo ships are very popular.
As for when container prices, which are still soaring, will fall, overall, due to the current global epidemic prevention and control situation is still unclear, it may still take one to two years to resume work and production overseas. Viral drugs have been fully confirmed to be effective, and only after the production and trade activities of various countries return to normal can transportation capacity and container supply return to a relatively stable downward stage.