Looking forward to the third quarter of this year, Zhou Dequan, director of the China Shipping Prosperity Index Compilation Office, believes that the prosperity and confidence index of all types of shipping enterprises will recover slightly in this quarter. However, due to the oversupply in the transportation market and carbon emission reduction requirements, the market will continue to be under pressure in the future. Chinese shipping companies have a slight lack of confidence in the prospects for industry recovery in the future and whether the traditional peak season in the third quarter can arrive as scheduled, and they are more cautious.
The person in charge of the above-mentioned Zhejiang International Freight Enterprise stated that for them, the peak season usually starts at the end of August and early September, and it is expected that the business volume will rebound in the second half of the year, but the profit margin will continue to be low.
Chen Yang admitted that the industry is currently quite confused about the future trend of freight rates, and “they all feel that there is too much uncertainty”.
Contrary to the market’s expected peak season, Container xChange expects the average container price to further decrease.
The Shanghai Shipping Exchange analyzed that the overall capacity scale of the US East route has decreased, and the imbalance between supply and demand in the early stage has significantly improved. Some carriers’ loading rates have also rebounded, and some flights are fully loaded. The loading rate of the US West route has also rebounded to a level of 90% to 95%. For this reason, most airlines raised their freight rates according to the market conditions this week, which also made the market freight rates rebound to a certain extent. On July 14, the market freight rates (shipping and shipping surcharges) of Port of Shanghai exported to the basic ports in the West and East America were US $1771/FEU (40 foot container) and US $2662/FEU respectively, up 26.1% and 12.4% from the previous period.
In Chen Yang’s view, the recent slight rebound in freight rates does not mean that the market is starting to recover. At present, we have not seen any significant rebound momentum on the demand side. On the supply side, even if the delivery time of some new ships is delayed, they will come sooner or later.
The business volume of the company in June and the first half of this year has decreased compared to last year, but overall it is still higher than before the epidemic. “Liang Yanchang, Assistant General Manager of Xiamen United Logistics Co., Ltd., told First Finance that the continuous decline in freight rates and fierce competition have brought greater challenges to the enterprise. But starting from July, freight rates have slightly increased, and China’s supply chain still has great resilience. With more and more Chinese companies’ going global ‘, it is expected that the overall market will recover in the second half of the year.
We should see that foreign trade operations are accumulating new vitality. Although the year-on-year growth rate of imports and exports in May and June decreased, the month on month growth remains stable. “Li Xingqian said at a press conference on the 19th,” The throughput of foreign trade goods and containers in ports across the country monitored by the transportation department is also increasing, and the actual import and export of goods is still relatively active. Therefore, we maintain optimistic expectations for the prospects of foreign trade in the second half of the year
Driven by the “the Belt and Road” related business, the railway has grown as a whole. According to the data of China Railway Co., Ltd., from January to June this year, 8641 Trans-Eurasia Logistics trains were operated, and 936000 TEUs of goods were delivered, up 16% and 30% respectively year on year.
For international logistics and trade enterprises, in addition to improving their internal operational efficiency, Liang Yanchang and others have been actively visiting customers and partners in more countries since the end of last year. While docking with overseas resources, they are also laying out overseas market development sites to form multiple profit centers.
The head of an international freight forwarding enterprise in Yiwu mentioned above also remains optimistic in the face of severe challenges. He believes that after experiencing this wave of adjustment, Chinese enterprises may be able to better participate in the market competition of global trade and freight logistics in the new global trade pattern. What enterprises need to do is self update and actively adjust, “survive first, then have the opportunity to live well”.
Post time: Jul-25-2023