More Asia Loops Suspended As GRI Looms
The Alliance have recently announced the suspension of two service loops from Asia, as an ocean freight General Rate Increase (GRI) looks set for next month.
The suspension of the ‘FE5 Asia-Europe’ and ‘EC4 Asia-US’ loops will begin in November, and follows the recent 2M Alliance announcement to suspend one of its own loops in a winter schedule. This is in addition to a heavy wave of blanked sailings being confirmed across all alliances recently.
Carriers are also advising of a GRI coming into effect from next month which may affect multiple ocean routes, not just Asia origin services. The levels of the potential increases are currently unclear and will vary according to the tradelane and carrier.
With demand being so low for global shipping, it could be argued that market conditions do not lend themselves to a sustainable increase right now.
However, with so much capacity taken out of the market it is impossible to predict the next few weeks, therefore our advice to customers is to be prepared for increases from November.
The Atlantic Pacific team are closely monitoring this developing situation, and will advise customers of specific rate changes as they become more clear.
