Supply chain turmoil will last longer than thought, forcing big upgrades to container freight rates and carrier profit forecasts in Drewry’s latest Container Forecaster report.
A longer than anticipated period of supply chain disruption has forced Drewry to once again raise our forecasts for container freight rates and industry profitability in the latest edition of the Container Forecaster.
While the container shipping network is clearly under intense pressure, a lot of goods are still getting through (eventually). Drewry expects world port handling to increase by 8.2% this year, or 7.2% against pre-pandemic 2019. This is a downgrade on our previous guidance of 10.1% given three months ago, since when disruption in the supply chain crisis has worsened as cases of Covid-19 temporarily shuttered some Chinese terminals, while extreme weather events have compounded the problem. Drewry does not expect to see operations normalise until the end of 2022.
