At present, the international shipping market is facing serious congestion, a series of problems such as hard to find one cabin, hard to find one box, and rising freight rates. Shippers and freight forwarders also hope that regulators can come out and intervene in shipping companies.

In fact, there have been a series of precedents in this regard: because exporters cannot order cabinets, US regulatory agencies drafted legislation to require shipping companies to accept orders for all US export containers;

South Korea’s anti-monopoly agency imposed fines on 23 liner companies for alleged collusion to manipulate freight rates;

The Ministry of Communications of China also responded: to coordinate with international liner companies to increase the capacity of China’s export routes and the supply of containers, and to investigate and deal with illegal charges…

However, the European Commission stated that it refused to take action on the overheated shipping market.

Recently, Magda Kopczynska, head of the European Commission’s maritime department, said, “From the perspective of the European Commission, we are studying the current situation, but I really don’t think we should make a policy decision in a hurry to change everything that has been working well. ”

Kopczynska made this statement at a webinar in the European Parliament.

This statement made a group of freight forwarders call good guys directly. Some organizations dominated by shippers had hoped that the European Commission could intervene in shipping companies in the face of soaring transportation, industry delays, and irregular supply chains.

The congestion challenge and the over-loading of terminals cannot be entirely attributed to the increase in demand during the new crown epidemic. The CEO of Mediterranean Shipping pointed out that the container industry has been lagging behind in the development of infrastructure, which is also a major challenge in the container market.

“No one in the industry expected that the pandemic would cause the container market to heat up. Even so, the fact that the shipping industry’s infrastructure has been lagging behind has also triggered some of the challenges facing the industry.” Søren Toft at the World Ports Conference on Wednesday ( During the World Ports Conference), I talked about the bottlenecks encountered this year, the congestion of the ports and the high freight rates.

“No one expected the market to become like this. But to be fair, infrastructure construction has been lagging behind and there is no ready-made solution. But this is a pity, because now the business is at the highest level.”

Søren Toft called the past nine months “very difficult”, which has also led MSC to make the necessary investments, such as expanding its fleet by adding several new ships and containers, and investing in new services.

“The root of the problem was that the demand had dropped sharply before, and we had to withdraw the ship. Then, demand soared again beyond anyone’s imagination. Today, due to Covid-19 restrictions and distance requirements, the port has been short of manpower for a long time, and we are still affected. “Toft said.

At present, the time pressure of major container ports in the world is very high. A week ago, Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen said that due to market chaos, the peak season will be prolonged.

He said the current situation may cause bottlenecks and delays, and may make the already high freight rates even higher when the goods are prepared early on Christmas.

“Almost all the ships are now fully loaded, so only when the congestion eases, the carrying capacity of the line will increase and the speed will slow down. If the demand is still picking up during the peak season, it may mean that the peak season will be extended a bit.” Habben Jansen said.

According to Habben Jansen, the current demand is so huge that the market has no prospect of returning to normal.