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Shortages of the ribbed steel boxes that have plied the global economy for a half-century are plaguing transpacific routes in particular. The dearth is boosting the purchase price of new containers and lease rates by 50%, snarling port traffic, adding surcharges and slowing deliveries heading into the holidays.<\/p>\n
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A surge in Chinese exports<\/a> and robust consumer demand in the U.S.<\/a> help explain the tightness, and major shipping liners like Hapag-Lloyd AG are scrambling to reposition their bigger 40-foot-long containers from less busy parts of the world. Nico Hecker, Hapag-Lloyd\u2019s director of global container logistics, dubbed it a \u201cblack swan\u201d moment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The German sea-freight company is \u201cexperiencing the strongest increase in 40-foot demand following one of the strongest decreases in demand ever,\u201d Hecker said in a post on the company\u2019s website last week. \u201cThe containers must be returned to China as quickly as possible to be equipped for an expected strong fourth quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The squeeze shows up in an indicator developed by Container xChange, an online platform based in Hamburg, Germany. The latest reading of its Container Availability Index was 0.04 for the 40-foot extra-tall boxes \u2014 the size popular for consumer products \u2014 in Los Angeles, while Shanghai slumped to 0.22. On a scale of zero to 1, the dividing line between surpluses and shortages is 0.5.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dire predictions that global trade would collapse this year prompted container carriers to cancel sailings<\/a> to underpin freight rates. Those forecasts proved far too pessimistic, though, and industry observers now say a sharp second-half rebound may mean container volumes for 2020 end up not far off levels reached in 2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Economists have long debated whether international commerce lifts all economic boats, and many nowadays agree that it does, in theory at least. But the market for a commodity like shipping containers is very much a zero-sum game, where winners and losers are decided by who does and doesn\u2019t have their hands on the available supply.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had no used containers for sale for three or four weeks now,\u201d said Chris Osborne, managing director of Budget Shipping Containers in Birmingham, U.K. \u201cI am missing out on sales, definitely, by not having the stock there but I\u2019m also not losing them to competitors because they\u2019re in the same boat.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n About 35 million shipping containers are currently in use globally, making some 170 million full trips a year, according to Florian Frese, marketing director at Container xChange. About 55 million of those trips are made when they\u2019re empty \u2014 on returns trips or as shipping companies realign them with the demand.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n