Global container imbalance in supply and demand
The lack of containers has been keeping the freight rates at a high level, which increased freight costs of consumers and companies, as well as became a great threat to the global economic recovery.
Due to the COVID-19 epidemic and the peak needs for shipments before the New Year holiday, the high cargo volume of the European and North American routes causing the severe port congestion, coupled with the shortage of containers, the problem of imbalance in the global containers’ supply and demand has emerged.
According to market participants, the imbalance situation in the shipping market will continue at least into the first quarter of this year. The estimated shortage of global containers has reached 500,000 units so far.
