Name: European Freight Market Update 13 Jan 2026
Uploaded: 2026-01-13T18:35:46.587Z
Duration: 26 min 18 s
Description: European Freight Market Update 13 Jan 2026

Transcript for "European Freight Market Update 13 Jan 2026": Hello, everyone, and thank you for attending today's European Freight Market Update. My name is Jannik, and I'm the senior manager, Ocean Freight in Germany at Flexport. We do before we dive in, we'll go over a few quick housekeeping notes to have everyone get oriented. On your screen, you will see a sidebar to the right of the main stage where you can submit questions. At the end of our presentation, we will host a q and a and answer a few audience questions. So be sure you question put your questions in early. In the same sidebar, you will see a tab labeled docs. This is where you can download a copy of today's slide. Now a brief legal note. Please keep in mind that all of our information provided in this session is based on the situation at this current time and may not be customized to your specific business requirements. We always recommend reaching out to a flexible expert to discuss your particular situation. Here's today's agenda. We will share the latest updates on Europe's air and ocean markets, review key customs developments, and provide recommendations to keep your freight moving. Now let's kick it off with air freight and our first speaker, Franco. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today's Airfreight market update. My name is Franco, and I'm a senior air pricing associate for Central And South Europe. Let's dive into today's airfreight update, and let's have a look at what's going on in the market. We start with our usual structure, and let's have a look first at the demand. So in 2025, despite all of the turmoil and volatility mostly caused by tariffs, the global air cargo volumes recorded a 4% growth year over year despite the record volumes that we had in 2024. Asia Pacific, as expected, was the region that recorded the strongest growth at 8%. And to be fair, of course, China was on the lead, but the largest gains were on Southeast Asian countries, and more specifically Vietnam, which registered double digit air volume growth. Now turning to the supply, the capacity grew 6% in 2025, recovering for the first time to 2019 levels. And the expectation for this year is a similar growth approximately by 6%, 7%, and this will outpace the demand growth expectation. So this means that for 2026, this is the first time we'll have an imbalanced market in favor of the supply. Now turning to the rate level, prices for the whole month of December remained flat after a 7% surge in November. And as expected, rates fell pretty sharply over the holidays, but a rebound is now expected in the January ahead of the Lunar New Year. Finally, the outlook for 2026 in Q1. In 2026, the air cargo growth is expected to slow down to 3%, in line with the GDP growth expectations, while in Q1, the market should ease as supply and demand stabilize right after Runa New Year. If we go to the next slide, and looking at the Far East Westbound, here on the right, you can see a graph showing the TAC index data, and it clearly reflects the softening of the rates over the holiday period. But we expect a strong rebound now in the January set ahead of the Lunar New Year. Moreover, just as we experienced in 2025, the ecommerce is still expected to be the primary driver shaping this Lunar New Year peak. And finally, robust demand and capacity constraints are still expected across Southeast Asia and Taiwan. Now moving to the Transatlantic, and more specifically having a look at the Transatlantic Westbound. Despite the holiday price contraction, rates have already recovered to late November levels, and carriers are further adjusting their schedules, reflecting the lower demand that usually occur in Q1. Hence, capacity will remain pretty tight until late March at least as when the summer schedule begins. Moreover, anticipate potential capacity volatility due to the adverse weather conditions, just as we experienced, for instance, last week in Amsterdam. If we go to next slide, before concluding, as usual, have a few effort recommendations. First of all, keep a close feedback loop with your suppliers, customer, and logistics provider ahead of the Lunar New Year peak. And what you should do is really try to work on your forecast and plan proactively in order to avoid very expensive last minute bookings with very low quality service. Then consider also reviewing your procurement cycle because in light of the supply demand imbalance, you might consider adjusting the validity of your tenders to ensure the best commercial solution available at the time. Then finally, a key lesson from 2025, keep monitoring very, very closely possible tariff and customs policy changes as they will definitely shape the market. Thank you very much for your attention. I will now leave the floor for the to Jannik for the Ocean update. Thanks a lot, Franco. Before we kick it off with the actual ocean slides, we would like to ask you a question about outstanding bookings on FiOS WestOne. So if you are importing from Asia, please take a minute and answer the question. So how much of your volumes that need to depart in Asia before Lunar New Year are already booked? Have you booked everything? Are you averaging two third to almost everything, or do you have still a bunch of bookings open that need to be placed for goods that need to depart before your supplier are going to basically leave for vacation? We have the votes in. 10 of you voting, 100% is booked. We have the majority of you answering that 75 to 909099% are booked, and also a couple voting that 25 to 74% are booked. In terms of the timelines and the upcoming lunar New Year, I can only emphasize everyone to place the bookings as soon as possible or basically also push the supplier in Asia to place the bookings as tight space is becoming tight. We are going to have a look on this in a minute. Awesome. Thanks. Then let's kick off the the actual slides. On Friday, the SCFI increased by 29 US dollar per TEU after no index being updated due to national holiday in China on the January 2. So this week's SCFI to North Europe is now sitting at 1,719 US dollar per TEU. That does mean 324 US dollar increase since 2025. The twenty twenty six Lunar New Year falls on the February 17 and will start the year of the fire horse. As every year, factories in China will be closed and carrier react to the missing output with blank sailings. For now, we have registered 18 blank sailings in the weeks seven to nine, which will cause an average of 30% capacity missing on a weekly basis. Those 30% are roughly 100,000 TEU per week due to those blank sailings. Last week, parts of North Europe have been hit by severe weather conditions. Of course, there's no good timing for disruptions like this. But right after Christmas and New Year, where operations teams already need to work on backlogs, those conditions caused further delays and a huge effort on replanning container. We will have a closer look to this later, but for now, let's jump on Transatlantic related news. On Transatlantic, the rate levels remain stable while we switch from q four into 2026, which usually starts lower in terms of exports out of the European Union. On the other side, TPEB rates are increasing constantly since week forty nine and are now sitting at USD 2,218 per TEU to the West and USD 3,128 per TEU to the East Coast. The graph on this slide shows the year on year development in global container demand measured in TEU. The global demand grew 7.2% year over year in November based on loaded volumes. This is not only a strong comeback after 3.4% growth in October, it is also the highest growth rate in a month in 2025. Overall, the ocean freight market remains separated, as North America, for example, is declining in November by 0.9%, whereas the rest of the world increased by almost 10%. Let's switch to the next slide and check on some events impacting global operations recently. Good news first, rail operations on both US East And West Coast are running fluid. Some ports, as for example, Los Angeles, Long Beach, see two to three days railed well, but overall, the operation is stable. Also in India, weather conditions became better throughout the last couple of months, and the situation is stable. If you are importing from India, look out for the annual grape season, which is about to start and typically puts pressure on space and equipment for shipments out of India. As mentioned earlier, Europe was hit by severe weather conditions causing heavy delays. Temperatures below the freezing point paired with heavy snow for multiple days were not only forcing terminals to stop operations, for example, in Hamburg and Rotterdam, but also forced schools to close and even cancel football games in Germany. Waiting times in in at port increased to up to twenty hours, and also yard utilization, for example, in Antwerp and Hamburg is above 90% in certain terminals. In the meantime, temperature is rising, and also the snow is disappearing. We are seeing some some rain in North Europe, which lets also the Rhine water levels rise. So now everybody is recovering from a backlog that basically happened throughout the last three weeks. Why do I mention three weeks simply due to the national holidays and Christmas and New Year where we did not have any rail departures or limited rail departures, and we just limited the the operations overall in North Europe. Now let's move on to the OceanFreight recommendations. Pretty much as usual, but especially with Lunar New Year ahead, it is very important that you book your shipments. So all as said already at the beginning, make sure that your supplier the the closing hours of your supplier are communicated with the freight forwarder and also make sure that the bookings are placed. Ideally, to leverage the space, which is left until until the holidays in China will kick in, you keep the bookings as small as somehow possible to make sure that that the vessel departures are utilized in the best possible way. One topic that is still important is the different service levels that are around. The earliest available departure does not mean that your goods will arrive in North Europe also the earliest as we see a a vast range in transit times still between forty to sixty days. So keep an eye on on the different service levels. That's it for Ocean, and I'm happy to introduce Charles who takes over the customs part. Hi, everybody. Good to see you. I guess we're not allowed to say happy New Year because we've put our Christmas trees away, etcetera. But happy New Year. Nice to nice to be here again. We wanted to talk today about US drawback, which will be of interest to to some of you who are exporting out to The US or involved in that trade. It's quite an important subject, and we saw in q four and q three last year an awful lot of companies that are non US based, so based in Europe, based in The UK, and and further afield, seeking support from us here in Europe to to get them their drawback and figure out how that should be done. So drawback effectively allows you to go back and look at customs duties in The US for the previous five years. When we do that and when you do that as an organization, you're mapping what you did with those goods. So you're looking for areas within the kind of basic requirements of reexport, for example. The the issue, though, is that when you map the history, you are also looking to the future. The drawback can keep giving if your processes and your criteria remain the same. So you have a strict five year recovery process, but then if you move forward for the existing year and you look at the end of that year and say, okay. Quarterly, annually, every six months, I can look at my drawback process and keep claiming. So not only does it give you that strict five year recovery period, but if your process stays the same, it also allows you to look moving forward and keep claiming drawback on the activities you undertake. US CBP, US Customs estimate about 7,000,000,000 US dollars of unclaimed drawback is available. So if you're in this space, if you're exporting, you might wanna take a look at this area and see if there's a process by which you can reclaim some of the duties on your import. So what do you need? Basic requirements. You need a US presence. That's your company as a foreign entity. That might be your own organization in The United States or US company. In some cases, it might be a client that you're working with where you have one client relationship and you have a partnership where you can talk about how this works. You need to be paying duties. And when we say duties, we don't just mean customs duties. We mean AIPA. We mean the three o ones and the two three two tariffs for the areas of autos and parts where there is an exception for those two three twos. So it's much broader than just your customs duties that you traditionally would pay. There are other things in there that we can we can look at. Obviously, IEPA, everybody's waiting with their exporting to The US. At this time, we're importing to The US. They're all waiting for the IEPA decision that's expected this week, and Flexport will clearly provide data and information once that decision is is released. If it's negative, remember, drawback allows you to recover IEPA. Products have got to be imported. So that's obvious. We pay customers' duties when they arrive. But then what happens to those products? Most of the companies that are operating globally now understand what their supply chain looks like. They know the ultimate end use of their goods. There are so many pieces of legislation, environmental sanctions, etcetera, that require us to know that. So what happens to your goods when they enter The States? Are they re exported from The US? Are they used to be in the manufacturing process in The US? Something we found with a lot of clients was unknown, and not utilized. So if they're used in manufacturing and the ultimate product that they're placed into is exported, then you have, the ability to claim drawback. And then you have returns, things that are returned that arrive in the country often in the, the the fashion industry. We see this, we see lots of items that go b to c that changing with de minimis and ultimately they now need to be returned in a more consolidated and controlled way opens it up for potential for drawback. Next slide, please. So if you're involved in The United States, if drawback is something you're thinking about, may not know about, may not have too much information on, please let us know. Think about you know, if you're already doing this, have you verified that you're exploring all the different processes that are available? You know, we can help you with drawback, or you can simply put something into AI and ask how many drawback processes there are available. You might be surprised. If you have a fit, this is worth a discussion. If you're doing this today, are you maximizing your drawback recovery? Flexport recently introduced in its autumn release some technology that is really maximizing out for our clients, many new clients, much more drawback recovery than has been seen before with the existing software. The technology is really good. It's getting 10 to 15% more of clients and in some cases, much more. So if you you're already doing this today, you're quite happy, everything's fine, that's great. Please think about the fact that the technology has changed, and it might be more efficient than your existing tech provider. If you're not doing this, do you meet the basic requirements? Those basic issues that you're seeing there, reexport manufacturing and returns, scrapping product, all of these things. If you're in that space in The US or you don't know you're in that space, then perhaps go and do some discovery and find out because there's money that you can save. I guess that's the last point. Are you are you leaving the money on the table? We see so much complexity in the tariffs today for The United States. This is one thing that remains quite static and is available to all parties that have the qualifying characteristics to be able to make a claim. We'd love to help you with that. If you have questions about this, please put them in the chat, and we can answer them. Or you can reach out to me directly, or you can reach out to the customs BD website web link email link, and we'll be happy to help. Thank you very much. Handing it over back to questions. Thanks, Charles. Before we actually dive to the q and a session, I want to quickly highlight the reasource we've created that expands on many of the of the themes we are discussing today. So we've put together a comprehensive guide featuring expert forecasts focused on how the freight and shipping landscape may evolve through 2026. I think one of the questions that that is most important for for not only the freight forwarders, but also the the the companies doing the freight. The goal is to help you navigate ongoing volatility with clearer perspective and a practical guidance. The guide also includes a 2026 checklist, which you can find on page nine. You can access the full guide via the link on the chat. So let's get back on stage and dive into the q and a. So if you have any questions and did not insert them yet, please do so. We have already received some. And the first one is actually for you, Franco. It's an effort question. So maybe the question is how can we best prepare for the Lunar New Year and the upcoming holidays? Thanks, Jannik. That's a very interesting question. So as I said during my presentation, rates are now on relatively soft level, but we expect a rebound in the January. That's expected. That's the seasonal increase that we have before the Lunar New Year. This year, that's a bit we we we call it a delayed lunar New Year since it's gonna be in late February. But how can we best prepare for the peak? So first of all, work very closely with your suppliers on the forecast. If you can have a clear forecast, it's easier to plan accordingly and try to distribute and place the bookings with the airlines as soon as possible. Let's let's call it the four to seven days rule. So ideally, you should book four to seven days before the cargo ready date in order to secure high quality capacity with reliable carriers. We know it's not always possible, but that's definitely our recommendation to minimize costs and also try to avoid as much as possible any delay. Then, something really important is also to prioritize the cargo. So work very closely with your supplier in order to ship before the cargo that's actually crucial for your supply chain. Because in the last few days leading to lunar New Year, apart from the tight capacity with with airfreight carriers, the problem is also to secure capacity with the with trucks. So sometimes the issue is that we can secure the capacity with the with the carriers, but there's no truck available to pick up the cargo. So that's a risk you definitely wanna avoid. So work closely as said with your with your suppliers to prioritize the cargo. That's that's a way to to definitely make sure your supply chain continues on a smooth path. We have an ocean question for you, Jannik. And public is asking, Maersk and CMA are transiting a few vessels through the Suez Canal. Do you think these are some new signs of an overall rerouting or not yet? Thanks for the question, Franco. Actually actually a question that we receive quite often in the in the last couple of months. So it's true. There are bigger container vessel transiting through Suez. We need to make sure that we that we talk about the trade lanes and and how they are basically diverted. So the Maersk vessel that recently transited through Suez was a vessel going from from Near Middle East to to The US East Coast, and also the CMA vessels that made some headlines throughout the last couple of weeks and months. Our vessel being transiting through Zoos, but on the eastbound journey. So they are basically transiting from from North Europe to to back to Asia. And, unfortunately, due to the to the massive import export of trade that we have, are carrying a lot of empty equipments to Asia to basically reposition equipment, not only, but quite with a few units. Overall, on on FIS westbound, so everything that touches North Europe and and also West MET plus everything that's going to the East Coast, the situation for now remains the same. So the the big container lines are transiting not through the sewers. They are rerouting the vessels around Cape Of Good Hope. And so far, there has not been any communication or or any clear sign that this is going to change in the near future. The comments from from the ocean carrier are pretty clear. If they transit, then they need to really switch to full operation, which is going to cause months of rerouting and reshuffling until every service and every vessel is is back in line. This is nothing that they can basically test and change on short notice. So it needs to be very clear that that the passage is is safe for for everyone and that they can transit through sewer. So so far, no structural structural change in in the rerouting. Alright. So far, that's that's it. We have no further question. Thanks everyone for attending. We're going to do close the webinar here. Great that you joined us, and happy to see you next month in the next webinar. Thanks. Thank you.