I. Reasons for the skyrocketing shipping prices 1. The arrival of shipping season. Generally speaking, the fourth quarter of the year is the traditional peak season for cross-border e-commerce, which brings greater freight demand. Due to the huge freight volume, this has further brought about the contradiction between supply and demand, leading to the increase in freight prices.
2. The contradiction between supply and demand. In the first half of 200212002, the world economy gradually recovered, especially in China, which bears the heavy responsibility of global manufacturing export. The volume of export containers rose sharply, and it was hard to find a box, that is, it was impossible to book shipping space and containers. For example, on August 2 1 day, the world's largest single container terminal, Yantian Port, Shenzhen, 1 1000, was robbed within half an hour, showing the extent of container shortage. At the same time, the global logistics supply chain is also impacted by port congestion and inland transportation delay, which leads to the tension between supply and demand in the container shipping market and the upward pressure on freight rates of major routes.
Because the epidemic situation in China has been well controlled, factories have resumed work in large quantities, while most manufacturers in the United States still stop production, the demand for goods from China in the United States will naturally increase, China goods need to be exported to the United States in large quantities, and countries such as Europe and the United States will also increase their imports of goods from China. However, the shipping company and transportation capacity have not increased, resulting in a situation of short supply and higher freight rates.
3. The impact of the epidemic. Due to the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic, ports all over the country have upgraded their control over anchored ships, which has aggravated the ship schedule delay and the contradiction between supply and demand. For example, the number of container ships berthing in places like Los Angeles has reached a record high. On September 10, local time, 55 ships were moored or idle at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, waiting for unloading, breaking the record of 44 ships set at the end of August, and the congestion was more serious than when the ports were temporarily closed in 2002 and 2004. Due to the epidemic, the number of migrant workers in the United States has decreased. Due to the shortage of manpower, the shipping company had to raise labor costs to attract more workers.
4. collective price increases. In addition to the above reasons, it is also related to human factors, that is, some shipping companies join hands to raise prices. According to reports, CMA Shipping took the lead in announcing the freezing of freight rates after the surge in shipping quotations in the past year, saying that it would no longer raise prices. In fact, as analyzed by relevant people, the freight rate of CMA Shipping is much higher than that of most companies, and maintaining the current freight rate will be endless. Since the company has fully booked the shipping space at 5438+00 in June, it is meaningless to push up the price increase. In addition, China, the United States and the European Union have strengthened the supervision of freight rates, which should be the main reason for the company's decision to freeze freight rates until next February 1.
Second, the impact of the surge in shipping prices? 1. The performance of shipping enterprises has increased substantially. The soaring freight rate has greatly increased the performance of related listed companies. The share price of COSCO Air Sea, the leading shipping company, has risen from 2 yuan last year to more than 20 yuan now (as of September 13, the share price was 23.09 yuan), and its share price has increased tenfold in just one year. In the second quarter of this year alone, the net profit of COSCO Aerospace was as high as 2165 million yuan, 25 times that of the same period last year. On September 13, stimulated by the news that the shipping price between China and the United States soared five times, the shipping share price rose collectively.
2. Squeeze the profit space of export enterprises. At present, the sea freight of a container to Europe and America has reached150,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan. Compared with before, the freight rate increased by 5 times to 10 times, and the profits of enterprises were basically diluted by 30% to 50%. Among them, small and medium-sized enterprises suffer the most, especially some export enterprises that produce low-value goods, and the sea freight price even exceeds the product value. In the long run, small and medium-sized enterprises are facing a severe test, and how to tide over the difficulties requires new policies and new methods.
? 3. Affect the global supply chain. The surge of shipping price and container price will inevitably lead to the imbalance of supply chain, and then affect the security of global supply chain. This has attracted the attention of global regulators and legislators. On September 8th, official website, the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) of the United States announced that China's Ministry of Communications, the United States Maritime Commission and the European Union had held the "Global Shipping Supervision Summit". The summit provided a platform for maritime container regulatory agencies in various countries to share information observed by their respective regulatory and law enforcement mechanisms in the market, and to deal with the price adjustment of container carriers.
4. Promote the development of shipbuilding industry. In the case of hard to find a box and high freight rate, the giants in the shipping market are paying close attention to shipbuilding, expanding their business scale and seizing market share. On the evening of September 2nd, COSCO Konghai, the A-share listed company of China Ocean Shipping Group, announced that ten wholly-owned subsidiaries of OOCL, the holding subsidiary, signed shipbuilding agreements with Nantong COSCO Kawasaki and Dalian COSCO Kawasaki respectively to build 10 container ships with a capacity of16,000 TEUs at a price of 654.38+58 million US dollars each. This is the second time that COSCO Marine Control has invested10 billion yuan in shipbuilding in less than two months. 15 On the evening of July, COSCO Marine Control announced that an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary, COSCO Mercury, signed a 10 shipbuilding agreement with COSCO Heavy Industry, and * * * plans to build six 14092TEU container ships and four 16 180TEU container ships, with the total agreement price/ One of the driving forces for COSCO Air and Sea to invest heavily in shipbuilding is that the company has made huge profits in this round of soaring freight rates.
As for when the freight rate will go down, industry analysts believe that the supply will remain tight in the short term and the freight rate will continue to run at a high level. In the medium and long term, the gap between supply and demand will be slowly repaired. With the improvement of the epidemic situation, the port congestion problem will be alleviated and the actual transportation capacity will return to normal level. It is expected that the freight rate will gradually decrease in the next two years.