November GRI Planned As Two Asia Loops Suspended

Carriers are advising that an ocean freight General Rate Increase (GRI) will be introduced from next month as ‘The Alliance’ announce the suspension of two service loops from Asia.

The ‘FE5 Asia-Europe’ and ‘EC4 Asia-US’ loops will be suspended in November, which follows the recent 2M Alliance confirming the suspension of one of its own loops recently. There has also been a heavy wave of blanked sailings announced across all alliances in the past fortnight.

We have received several notices of a GRI coming into effect from next month, which may affect Asia origin routes and other services. The exact levels of the planned increases are currently unclear and are likely to vary by tradelane and carrier.

Overall demand for global shipping remains low, which suggests that market conditions would not ordinarily support a sustainable increase right now.

However, significant capacity has been taken out of the market through loop suspensions and blanked sailings, therefore it is impossible to predict the outcome and our advice to customers is to be prepared for increases from November.

The Killick Martin team are monitoring this developing situation very closely, and will notify customers of specific rate changes as they become clearer.