According to the current data released by Shanghai Shipping Exchange, on January 21, 2022, China's export container index (CCFI) was 3555.24, another record high. Among them, the latest data of export container index of European routes are 5636.83, 2590.39 of US West routes and 2738.93 of US East routes.
The reporter learned that the global shipping freight capacity was seriously affected by the epidemic, which had a significant impact on international bulk commodity trade, and cross-border e-commerce, as an emerging form of foreign trade, was also impacted.
"The doubling of shipping prices has led many of our customers to dump their cabinets directly." Zheng JieXi (a pseudonym), the person in charge of a to B cross-border e-commerce enterprise in Shenzhen, told reporters 21, "with customs clearance and port detention fees, it is more expensive than the value of the goods. Of course, customers will choose to abandon the container." According to Zheng JieXi, the price of sea transportation has increased since May 2021. Before the price increase, the price of a high counter to South America was about 5500 US dollars. Now the price has reached 14500 US dollars, and there is no sign of decline at present.
However, the reporter also observed that while the ship freight soared, some suppliers began to choose overseas warehouses to prepare goods in advance to cope with uncertainties such as shipping costs and shipping schedule delays. Under the background of national policies strongly supporting the construction of overseas warehouses, the opportunities of cross-border e-commerce export industry, especially the layout of overseas warehouses, are worth looking forward to in the future.
The Spring Festival market is still high
On the occasion of January every year, affected by the traditional Chinese Spring Festival, many factories have holidays and workers return home. Due to the long Spring Festival holiday, the production capacity of factories has decreased. Superimposed on the factors that released the consumer demand in advance during the Christmas purchasing season in western countries in December, the shipping price usually tends to go down slightly during this period.
According to Dai bin, vice president of disifang and general manager of class B business division, due to the impact of the traditional Spring Festival factory holiday, many goods are basically finished in December or early January. In case of shortage, the surplus positions will naturally reduce prices, resulting in a downward trend in shipping prices. However, for the first half of 2022, there is still a shortage of positions, and the freight rate is expected to remain high.
According to the data, China's export container index (CCFI) was 3555.24 on January 21, 2022 and 3489.94 on January 14 of the previous period. The index continued to rise by 1.9%. The holiday market has failed to reverse the shipping market.
"In fact, the seller is very painful." The logistics director of a to C cross-border e-commerce big selling enterprise said bluntly, "on the one hand, the shipping price is rising wildly, and small sellers are unable to talk about positions with shipping companies; at the same time, some products have been eliminated, and things with large volume and low customer unit price, such as Christmas trees, can't be sold at all."
Jesse Zheng mentioned that in addition to the increase of shipping costs, enterprises are also faced with the situation of lack of containers and inability to ship goods. In addition, due to exchange rate fluctuations, changes in raw material costs and other factors, the increase of customer purchase costs leads to the reduction of orders.
For cross-border e-commerce enterprises, the most direct impact of the rise in shipping prices is reflected in the rise in transportation costs. In fact, compared with traditional foreign trade, the logistics cost of cross-border e-commerce has always been relatively high due to the meticulous delivery of cross-border e-commerce. Professor Chen Wanling, director of the international economic and Trade Research Center of Guangdong University of foreign studies, pointed out to reporters, "under the condition of the rapid rise of sea freight, cross-border e-commerce enterprises can not frequently adjust freight rates. For some enterprises without large capital, the rise of transportation costs still has a great impact."
Dai bin also mentioned the rising cost of cross-border logistics enterprises, but he believes that if the cost of the whole container is shared equally among individual goods, the overall cost of cross-border e-commerce enterprises is still controllable. "Whether a container to the United States rises to $20000 or $30000, the transportation cost of a single cargo in the container may be $1 or $2, which is relatively insensitive to many customers."
In the case of high shipping costs, relying on a single mode of transportation has exposed its shortcomings. Multimodal transport, that is, the combination of multiple modes of transportation, is considered to be the direction of international transportation in the future. Professor Chen Wanling analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of several transportation modes: "If the freight scale is relatively small and there is no need for containers, it may be better to take the train transportation, such as the China Europe train. The second is air transportation. Although the cost is higher, when the sea transportation rises to a certain extent, or even the same as the air transportation cost, air transportation can be considered for some products that are small in size but expensive in price and value."
Cross border e-commerce faces the bottleneck of maritime negotiation
In addition to the lack of containers, tight shipping capacity and rising freight rates, the post epidemic market also exposed the problem of insufficient bargaining chips for cross-border e-commerce enterprises in the international shipping market.
With the development in recent years, many international shipping companies have formed alliances. 2m alliance, ocean alliance and the alliance are the three major international shipping alliances. The above to C cross-border e-commerce sales logistics person in charge said that before the formation of the alliance, the shipping companies were still in a competitive state and seized the market by competing at low prices. However, after the formation of the shipping company alliance, a "tacit understanding" was formed, that is, the price remained agreed and no one would reduce the price. "Since the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, we have noticed that the alliance has raised prices at the same time. It can be said that it controls the whole market. We see the shipping companies adjust prices at the same time almost every half month."
In fact, the suspected collusion of shipping companies in raising prices has attracted special attention. On January 11, the general office of the State Council issued the opinions on doing a good job in cross cycle regulation and further stabilizing foreign trade (hereinafter referred to as the "opinions"), which pointed out that we should continue to strengthen the supervision in the field of international shipping and crack down on illegal charges and bid up freight rates in accordance with the law. Investigate suspected monopolistic behavior according to law and regulations. On multilateral and bilateral occasions, we called for joint unimpeded international logistics.
According to the announcement of the South Korean Fair Trade Commission on January 18, 23 Chinese foreign shipping enterprises will be fined a total of 96.2 billion won (about 512 million yuan) for their alleged bid up of shipping charges.
After the epidemic, when the global shipping capacity does not rise but falls, large multinational enterprises have occupied a fixed number of positions, and the newly entered cross-border e-commerce sellers often do not have negotiation chips.
The above-mentioned person in charge of cross-border e-commerce sales logistics mentioned that some large multinational enterprises such as Wal Mart have a fixed number of positions, and their signing with shipping companies has been cooperation for decades. No matter how the market changes, the large positions must be reserved for large enterprises, and the price that large enterprises can get is usually relatively low. "The last remaining positions will be given to Chinese freight forwarders. In the case of the shortage of global shipping capacity and the year-on-year growth of China's export goods, a large part of the price rise of shipping demand will be paid by some Chinese merchants."
The person in charge of logistics mentioned some abilities to resist the risk of price rise. For example, some big sellers have large orders and can get some contract prices with shipping companies to resist the risk of market price changes.
In fact, the above opinions issued by the general office of the State Council also made it clear to encourage foreign trade enterprises to sign long-term agreements with shipping enterprises, and guide local governments and import and export associations to organize small, medium-sized and micro foreign trade enterprises to connect with shipping enterprises directly.
Overseas warehouse ushers in opportunities
For the study and judgment of the global shipping market in 2022, the market voice generally believes that the overall transportation capacity is still relatively scarce, and it is almost impossible to return to the pre epidemic low.
On December 29, 2021, Cosco Shipping Holdings Co.Ltd(601919) general manager Yang Zhijian said at the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders that the company's long-term contract customers have strong willingness to sign contracts, and the volume and price have increased simultaneously. The price of long-term contract in 2022 is 2-3 times that in 2021.
Professor Chen Wanling analyzed that it mainly depends on the epidemic situation. European and American countries have basically liberalized the epidemic control. The normalization of epidemic control may promote the recovery of production, but the recovery of production capacity will not be too fast. Combined with the reduction of virus infection rate and the recovery of employment data, the shipping price may decline slightly, but the overall trend will still hover at a high level.
In addition to the rising transportation costs, the unstable shipping schedule has also had a certain impact on the cross-border e-commerce industry. In addition to the rising cost, Zheng JieXi said frankly: "waiting for the shipping date has also been delayed, so it has also led to several orders and other losses."
Professor Chen Wanling said: "the cross-border e-commerce industry will inevitably intensify competition in the process of rising sea prices. Shipping congestion and the extension of cargo delivery time lead to non punctuality, which is a bad experience for customers. Customers will choose other suppliers, resulting in the loss of orders."
The unstable shipping schedule has reduced the logistics timeliness of cross-border e-commerce export goods. Many respondents also mentioned that the unstable shipping schedule may stimulate the demand for overseas warehouses. Dai Bin said, "in this case, overseas warehouses actually have opportunities, because sellers can store goods in overseas warehouses in advance. At present, in addition to promoting the development of overseas warehouses in the strategic direction, customer demand is also one of the important driving forces for the vigorous rise of overseas warehouses."
The so-called overseas warehouse is a storage supporting facility that serves export products and pre places goods for consumption in advance. It can send goods to overseas warehouses in batches and realize the role of local sales and distribution. At present, many foreign trade enterprises and cross-border e-commerce export enterprises optimize the overseas logistics system by building "overseas warehouses" to solve the pain points of cross-border e-commerce links.
Recently, the 14th five year plan for digital economy development issued by the State Council clearly mentioned the need to cultivate and expand a number of leading overseas warehouse enterprises and build a cross-border e-commerce industrial chain and ecosystem. According to the data reported by the Ministry of Commerce, the import and export scale of cross-border e-commerce reached 1.98 trillion yuan in 2021, including more than 2000 overseas warehouses and a total area of more than 16 million square meters.
