Cargo Business Newswire

Monday, November 2, 2015

Asia-Europe box rates jumped 328 percent on Friday

Container rates from ports in Asia to Northern Europe surged 327.7 percent to $988 per TEU in the week ended on Friday, a source with inside information from the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index told Reuters.

Reuters said the fourfold increase was the result of planned rate increased announced in early October by most of the largest shipping companies, according to an article in the American Journal of Transportation.

In the week ending Friday, October 30, container freight rates jumped 298 percent from Asia to ports in the Mediterranean, rose 16.9 percent to ports on the U.S. West Coast and were up 8.8 percent to ports on the U.S. East Coast.

A.P. Moller-Maersk, a shipping industry bellwether, cut its 2015 profit forecast last week by 15 percent on a slowed container shipping market.