Interesting report below from Maersk who are the world's largest line, and whose financial performance is a good indicator on the health of the industry, and often, the future direction of freight rates.
We've all seen the large ocean freight rate rises from Asia in Jul and August this year and with another planned for September, this is a hot topic.
What is interesting about Maersk Line isn't that they are doing better financially (profit doubled in Q2 vs Q1, I'm more interested in the fact that they're managing to reduce their costs per container by 11% (USD 394 per 40 foot). Seems this was due to reduced fuel (bunker) costs and I'd imagine, their move to larger and larger vessels like the 18,000 TEU Emma Maersk below.
They have said they are always striving to be more competitive but that they are being very careful to manage capacity on the Asia Europe lane as of course over-capacity would drive rates down. They've still got a dilemma though as there are only a couple of trade lanes where they can redeploy the smaller 5000-10000 TEU vessels so my bet is that rates will soften as all lines reduce costs and continue the fight with each other over what is a commoditised offering.
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