Far East-Europe Spot Container Freight Rates Under Pressure Despite Ship Shortage

by Ship & Bunker News Team
Wednesday September 17, 2025

Spot container freight rates on the Far East-Europe corridor remain under heavy pressure, even as carriers continue to struggle with a persistent shortage of vessels.

Nearly two years after most Asia-Europe services were rerouted via the Cape of Good Hope to avoid Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, several weekly services still lack the ships needed to maintain regular sailings, sector specialist Alphaliner reports.

According to Alphaliner, the nine leading liner operators require 461 ships to cover all 31 Far East-Europe services offered by the OCEAN Alliance, Gemini Cooperation, Premier Alliance and MSC.

As of September 14, however, only 425 ships were in service, leaving a shortfall of 36 ships.

Based on a typical 14,000 TEU deployment, that equates to 504,000 TEU of missing capacity.

With virtually no idle fleet available and large charter vessels absent from the spot market, carriers have little room to plug the gaps.

"Last summer, this shortage of tonnage pushed spot ocean freight rates from China to North Europe to more than USD 10,000 per feu, reaching a level that the market otherwise only witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic," Alphaliner said.

"Spot rates from Shanghai to North Europe have declined 45% over the past ten weeks, with double-digit decreases in the last three weeks.

"This clearly hints at a rate war between some of the major operators."

Ship & Bunker News Team
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