DHL Ocean Freight Market Update – June 2021

Find out the latest developments of the global ocean freight market in this monthly analysis by DHL Global Forwarding.

Spot rates on the Asia–Europe trade started rising again the week after the Suez Canal blockage. The incident delayed ships on the Asia–Europe services by one or two weeks, leading to port congestion in some major ports and slowing down the repositioning of empty boxes. The Suez blockage also impacted the Asia–U.S. East Coast trade where spot freight rates increased by a record 12.9 percent.
Carriers have transferred as much capacity as possible to the two biggest East-West trades, which means that no ships are left now to deal with a surge in European exports to North America. Average weekly capacity in the Asia to North America trade shows a massive increase of 47.6 percent compared to May 2020, while the current offering on Far East–Europe is up 24.6 percent year-on-year.

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