Forwarders are being quoted rates as low as $1 on backhaul routes to East Asia, against a 20% decline in volumes.
One forwarder said they had been offered a rate of just $7 for a 40ft hi-cube container, and another had been quoted “just $1”.
The forwarder said: “Carriers are surviving on the still moderate westbound rates, [but eastbound] they have space and simply cannot fill it. Some places are even offering space for $1 – you have add-ons, like emissions trading schemes, but in the end you’re paying less than $50.”
Even that stands in stark contrast to Drewry’s latest World Container Index (WCI), from Thursday (21 March), which put Europe-East Asia averages at $484 per 40ft.
It therefore remains to be seen if these low quotes of $1 and $7 cited by forwarders are outliers, or markers of an emerging trend, underpinning that the latest WCI rate is a 41% year-on-year decrease.
Furthermore, data from Container Trade Statistics indicates demand on Europe-East Asia services plummeted 19.2% in January, year on year, to 424,200 teu.
Going back to 2023, January that year saw some 475,000 teu move Europe to East Asia, but thereafter 2023 monthly volumes hovered between the 505,078 teu recorded in August and the 582,222 teu recorded in October, indicating that the demand declines began bedding in at the end of 2023.