Knowledge
Will vietnam importers and exporters get lower logistics cost in coming years?
After the huge one-way movement of goods from Asia to EU and North America (NA) especially to US in the last two years during Covid pandemic, now we see the symbol of cargo, mostly in containers, going slow down and the movement of cargo back Asia from these market is very weak.
Consequently, the imbalance becomes more serious causing a backlog of huge empty containers in both EU and North America. In recent report from Flexport Ocean Timeliness Indicator (OTI), it is estimated that the volume of more than 4.3 million empty teus stay on yards beyond the demand in 2023.
In 2020 and 2021, due to the blocking and interruption of supply chain, cargo from Asia to EU and NA but less bounce back. Port congestions, shortage of workers, limited warehouse capacity, etc. keeping large volume of empty containers there. The situation made shipping lines ordering enormous empty containers to put into their fleet much more than normal levels in previous years.
We hope Vietnam shippers would not suffer from empty shortages like previous years and importers will enjoy better rates from the other markets to Vietnam.