Containers are still in short supply

According to data from the Ministry of Transport, the demand for China’s export container transportation market continued to be high in 2021. At the same time, the shortage of space and the shortage of empty containers led to the formation of a seller’s market. The booking freight rates of most routes have experienced several rounds of sharp rises, and the comprehensive index has continued to grow rapidly. Rising trend. In December, the average value of China’s Export Container Freight Index released by the Shanghai Shipping Exchange was 1,446.08 points, an average increase of 28.5% from the previous month. As the volume of my country’s foreign trade orders has increased significantly, the demand for containers has risen accordingly. However, the overseas epidemic has affected the efficiency of turnover, and it is difficult to find a container.

The development level of foreign trade is one of the main factors affecting the port container throughput. From 2016 to 2021, the container throughput of China’s domestic ports has increased year by year. In 2019, all Chinese ports completed container throughput of 261 million TEU, a year-on-year increase of 3.96%. Affected by the new crown epidemic in 2020, the development of foreign trade in the first half of the year was severely hindered. With the improvement of the domestic epidemic, China’s foreign trade business has continued to rebound since the 2021, even exceeding market expectations, which has promoted the growth of port container throughput. From January to November 2020, the total container throughput of China’s ports reached 241 million TEU, a year-on-year increase of 0.8%. Since 2021, the throughput of containers has continued to rise.

China’s containers are mainly exported, the export scale is huge, and the price is relatively stable, with an average price of 2-3 thousand US dollars per unit. Affected by factors such as global trade frictions and economic downturns, the number and value of China’s container exports declined in 2019. Although the rebound in China’s foreign trade business in the second half of 2020 has brought the container export business back up, the volume of China’s container exports from January to November still fell 25.1% year-on-year to 1.69 million; the export value fell 0.6% year-on-year to US$6.1 billion. In addition, in the second half of the year due to the epidemic, empty containers on feeder ships were looted by all manufacturing companies. The difficulty of finding a container has led to an increase in container export prices. In the first November of 2020, China’s average container export price rose to 3.6 thousand US dollars/ A. As the epidemic stabilizes and competition recovers, the price of containers will continue to rise in 2021.