The first sign of trouble was a 22 percent drop in the spot market rate to $456 per 20-foot-equivalent unit last week just days before the second GRI of September was to be instituted Sunday. The current rate and historical data can be found on JOC.com’s Market Data Hub.
Hapag-Lloyd is instituting a $950 per TEU, or $1,900 per 40-foot-equivalent unit, GRI effective Oct. 19 for containers moving between the Far East, excluding Japan, to all North Europe and Mediterranean destinations.
Reinforcing the perception carriers are still struggling with overcapacity, despite a number of service cuts byvarious players, is the fact that CMA CGM has voided sailings of the FAL 23 and the FAL 12 on Oct. 5 and Oct. 7, respectively. Both sailings voided are from Ningbo. The French carrier will on Oct. 8 void a Qingdao sailing on the FAL 8.
The cancellation of the FAL23 sailings is particularly noteworthy as that service was recently announced and was the combination of the carrier’s FAL 2 and FAL 3 services as a capacity cutting measure.
In the release announcing the blanked sailings, CMA CGM said the cuts were made “considering” China’s upcoming Golden Week, a vacation week where everyone is given paid time off arranged around a weekend to provide seven days off. At the same time, the release also said the blanked sailings were done “in order to adjust capacities in line with the seasonal slack of demand.”
