Copenhagen Denmark-based Maersk has said that the trade disruptions that had caused significant increases in container shipping rates, as well as causing congestion at major ports, could start to ease as we head into Q2 2021.
AP Moller-Maersk CEO Soren Skou said that Q4 2020 “was marked on the one hand by a continuous impact of the Covid-19 pandemic but also by some rewarding progress on our strategy to become the integrator of container logistics.”
Maersk said it expected that the current exceptional situation of higher demand levels, bottlenecks in the supply chain and the misplacement of empty containers globally would continue in Q1 but would normalize after that.
International Chamber of Shipping Chairman Esben Poulsson said last Wednesday February 10th that he expected rates to normalize. “There will be additional capacity added into the container line system and this demand will be dealt with”, he said.
The Drewry World Container Index found that the cost from Shanghai to Rotterdam reached $9,066 on January 21st.