Asia-Europe Container Rates Overtake Asia-North America for First Time in 2025

Asia-Europe container rates have overtaken Asia-North America for the first time in 2025, reflecting a sharp divergence in supply and demand between the world’s two largest markets.

container-vessel

Container vessel (Photo: Maritime Gateway)

For the first time since the start of the year, it is now more expensive to ship a 40ft container from Asia to Northern Europe than to the West Coast of North America, as spot rates on the two largest East-West trade lanes moved in opposite directions for a third week.

Spot rate indices all recorded another week of double-digit price declines for shipments from Asia to the West and East Coasts of the United States. The Shanghai-Los Angeles leg of the Drewry World Container Index (WCI) fell 15% from the previous week, ending at $3,180 per 40ft container.

Meanwhile, Xeneta’s XSI and Freightos’ FBX index also showed similar spot rates, although the magnitude of the declines differed. The XSI’s Far East-US West Coast fell 16% week-on-week to $2,677/40ft container and the FBX index fell 39% to $3,388/40ft container.

The lowest rate for this route was recorded on the Shanghai Container Freight Index (SCFI), which fell 19% to end the week at $2,089/40ft container.

WCI’s Shanghai-New York trade fell 11% week-on-week to $5,070/40ft container, while the same trade on FBX fell 15% to $6,116 and on SCFI fell 13% to $4,124/40ft container.

This was in stark contrast to the Asia-North Europe trade, which continued to surprise forwarders as the WCI index recorded an 8% week-on-week gain to finish at $3,468/40ft container – the last time Shanghai-Rotterdam was higher than Shanghai-Los Angeles on the index was on December 5 last year.

XSI’s Asia-Europe trade rose 17% to $3,354/40ft container, marking the fourth consecutive week of spot rate increases on the trade.

This also suggests that the new FAK (Fare for All Goods) rates of $3,900-$4,100 per 40ft container introduced by shipping lines on July 1 have been partly successful.

According to Jérôme de Ricqlès, shipping expert at French supply chain data company Upply, shipping lines on the Asia-Europe trade have also benefited from tight capacity management.

“Asia-Europe ticked up a bit in the past weeks. Why? First, because there were a lot of blank sailings,” he said in a freight rate webinar earlier this week.

“Secondly, because there was some capacity that was deployed to the transpacific to try to secure as much front-loaded volume as they could, the ratio between offer and demand on Asia-Europe was quite favourable for the shipping lines.”

“We are not talking about crazy numbers – we are more talking about stability. But the market maintains a consensus on Asia-Europe, which is very different to what happened on the transpacific, because we see transpacific rates are now decreasing quite vastly and front loadings were not as big between Asia and the US as carriers expected,” he explained.

And if the Asia-Mediterranean is any indication, rates to North Europe are likely to fall next week, with WCI’s Shanghai-Genoa leg down 9% week-on-week to finish at $3,751/40ft, while the FBX index shows the same trade down 5% to finish at $4,223/40ft. This could suggest that a similar attempt to raise FAK rates on July 1 has been a complete failure.

The FBX index also recorded a 4% decline on the China-North Europe trade, down to $2,969 per 40ft container.
Meanwhile, there was also an increase in transatlantic rates, which have been flat since mid-April. WCI’s Rotterdam-New York leg recorded a 7% increase from the previous week, to $2,119 per 40ft container.

July 1 also saw CMA CGM impose a peak season surcharge of $800 per 40ft container for westbound reefer shipments on the transatlantic trade from North Europe to the East Coast, Gulf Coast and Mexican ports.

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