INCREASED DISPARITY AMONG SHIPPING’S INDEX PROVIDERS
The ever-increasing ocean freight rates have led to an unexpected consequence: According to Vespucci Maritime, the disparity of rates measured by the container index providers (the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI), Drewry’s World Container Index (WCI), the Freightos Baltic Index (FBX), the Xeneta Shipping Index (XSI) and Platts) has widened, which can lead to difficulty and confusion to properly measure the correct price for a spot shipment.
As an example, on 6 August, indices on the Asia-Northern Europe route range from $13,653 per forty-foot container by WCI, to $17,000 according to Platts. Additionally, it appears that individual shipments have seen as much as $28,000.
Discussing this increasing gap, Lars Jensen, CEO of Vespucci Maritime, a Danish liner consultancy, explained that the different index providers measure different things: “They do not include the same customer mix, they do not include the same mix of surcharges, they do not include the same definition or inclusions of spot versus short-term contract. This is also to say that just because the indices diverge, it does not mean that one is ‘correct’ and the others are ‘wrong’.”
As data providers have had to grapple with the skyrocketing rates, some indices have been found to be less than perfect. For instance, on 28 July, Freightos and the Baltic Exchange, who administer the FBX, admitted that some outlier data is now being excluded in order to more accurately reflect market conditions. This resulted in a significant one-time adjustment that removed outliers and substantially increased rates on China/East Asia-US FBX lanes, which now account for the premium surcharges required for bookings.
Source: Splash