{"id":484599,"date":"2026-06-09T21:41:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T21:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/484599\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T21:41:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T21:41:16","slug":"rising-freight-costs-reflect-impact-of-gulf-crisis-and-early-peak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/484599\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising freight costs reflect impact of Gulf crisis and early peak"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"dreamstime_xs_375162273\"\/<\/p>\n

Photo: Mariusz Bugno, Dreamstime.com<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Gavin van Marle<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t09\/06\/2026<\/p>\n

While freight forwarders and shippers on the transpacific and Asia-Europe trades struggle with soaring spot rates and tight capacity amid an early peak season, new data from Container Trades Statistics (CTS) shows all-in freight costs began to rise significantly in April.<\/p>\n

The Global Price Index rose sharply, to 89 points, in April, an increase of more than 12% compared with March, when the index stood at 79 points \u2013 a month-on-month rise not seen for two years.<\/p>\n

Critically, the CTS price index also includes bunker surcharges and fuel cost recovery mechanisms.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is within pricing data that the true impact of the Gulf Crisis becomes most apparent,\u201d CTS said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last time the Global Price Index experienced a month-on-month increase of this magnitude was in June 2024, during the height of the Red Sea diversions, when vessel rerouting effectively removed capacity from the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis latest surge highlights the significant pressure the Strait of Hormuz closures are placing on global freight rates,\u201d the analysts added.<\/p>\n

\"Container<\/a><\/p>\n

Source: Container Trades Statistics<\/p>\n

On the Far East-Asia trade, the CTS price index rose to 89, a 6% increase on both March and April 2025, showing how geopolitical disruptions had already begun to affect the trade before the early peak season even began.<\/p>\n

Far East-Europe volumes were also strong in April; with 1.84m teu shipped, the month was up 12.3% on April 2025, clearly setting the conditions for the strong spot rate hikes and peak season surcharges carriers have rolled out recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Globally, 16.2m teu was shipped in April, which CTS described as \u201cremarkably resilient\u201d, and represented a 4% increase compared with April 2025, and a 1.6% month-on-month uptick.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore importantly,\u201d CTS said, \u201cyear-to-date volumes remain strong, standing 5% above 2025 levels. This reinforces a long-standing maxim of global trade: cargo behaves much like water, finding alternative routes when traditional pathways become restricted.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it also indicates how elongated container supply chains havebecome, both in terms sailings distance and time \u2013 one forwarder told The Loadstar today that, with schedule reliability remaining under pressure, many shippers preferred to ship early simply to make sure their freight was on the water.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Far East-Europe westbound, about the best reliability you can get is 60%, and most shippers we deal with have already built buffers into their supply chains to take account of that, because it\u2019s been bad for a long time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However, the volume growth CTS noted was not uniform: imports into the Middle East\/India region were down 19% year on year, to just over 1.4m teu, with \u201cthe largest reductions from cargo originating in Europe and the region\u2019s own intra-regional trade.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the timing and scale of these declines, it is reasonable to conclude that they are directly linked to the ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East,\u201d said CTS.<\/p>\n

In terms of the first four months of the year, North America joined Middle East\/India as the two regions to show year-on-year declines, -2% and -4% respectively, on the first four months of 2025 \u2013 ie, still before the \u201cLiberation Day\u201d tariff effects were fully felt.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor North America, the decline was primarily driven by reduced cargo volumes originating from Europe, the Indian Subcontinent and Middle East, and South and Central America,\u201d CTS noted.<\/p>\n

North American import volumes in April stood at 2.85m teu, around 150,000 teu more than March., while the Far East-North America price index increased 6.7%, both year on year and month on month to 94.<\/p>\n

Check out this week\u2019s\u00a0News in Brief\u00a0podcast, featuring exclusive content from Glyn Hughes, DG of TIACA, and\u00a0The Loadstar\u2018s Gavin van Marle<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo: Mariusz Bugno, Dreamstime.com By Gavin van Marle 09\/06\/2026 While freight forwarders and shippers on the transpacific and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":["post-484599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}