Long-term ocean freight rates remain unbowed by the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic, with the latest XSI® Public Indices report from Xeneta showing a decline of just 0.1% across September.

Spot rates, meanwhile, remain at an all-time high. However, with carriers now moving to reinstate tonnage on key routes, question marks remain over the mid to long-term resilience of rates against a backdrop of on-going economic uncertainty.

Coronavirus may have derailed economic activity across the board, but, thanks to proactive strategies from the world’s container carriers (including cancelling sailings and adjusting routes), long-term rates have defied expectations. According to XSI®, which is based on crowd-sourced data from leading shippers - utilising over 200 million data points, covering more than 160,000 port-to-port pairings – year-on-year rates have fallen by just 2.2%, down 2% since the start of 2020. September’s development follows on from a decline of 1.8% in August.

However, Xeneta warns that while September’s XSI® edged down, it already sees substantial increases for contracted rates for Q4 2020, with even more so expected for Q1 2021.

“Suffice to say, there’s many in the industry that continue to be taken by surprise by the apparent resilience of the segment’s all-important long-term rates,” said  Xeneta CEO Patrik Berglund. “This has been good news for carriers and less positive for shippers looking to negotiate new contracts. On top of that we see spot rates ‘hitting it out of the park’, with Far East – US trades commanding higher price tags than ever before. There’s a shade of the surreal to developments when we look at the wider economic and geopolitical context.”

Click here to get the full XSI® Public Indices report.

Photo:  Patrik Berglund