Presumably everyone can hardly believe this scenario: the container itself has become an expensive cargo, not just a tool for loading.
This is an incredible scene, but it is actually being staged.
In today's economic globalization of world trade, the transportation cost per kilometer is 26 times that of roads and 95 times that of oceans, and oceans occupy an absolute advantage.
Before the invention of the container system, sea transportation was a time-consuming, labor-intensive and cost-intensive transportation method. An American named McLean invented the container.
Everyone thought of using boxes to load goods, but no one thought of building a system. However, McLean used a complete set of procedures to scale and standardize freight, reducing shipping costs by more than 95%.
The container system is definitely a major invention in the history of human shipping.
After the invention of the container system, the world's maritime trade has developed rapidly, and many transactions that were not cost-effective have now become cost-effective.
The technical requirements for manufacturing containers are not high, and the original price is not expensive, so why is the price of containers so expensive?
In January 2020, the shipping price of a 40-foot container from Ningbo Port in China to Los Angeles in the United States is more than 1,000 US dollars.
On August 2, 2021, the price rose to $16,000.
On August 15, 2021, this price exceeded $20,000.
There is only one truth about this crazy wave of price increases, because the epidemic has severely disrupted the global production order and caused a large-scale shortage of supplies. At present, the only place in the world that can start work normally is China.
According to data from the General Administration of Customs of China, in November 2020, China's monthly trade surplus reached 75.4 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 102.9% compared with the data in November 2019, setting the highest growth rate in China in 40 years! For the whole year of 2020, China's exports increased by 3.6% year-on-year, imports fell by 1.1% year-on-year, and the trade surplus was US$535.03 billion.
This huge trade surplus has brought the two most direct effects.
First, orders from all over the world flew to Chinese factories like snowflakes. Everyone worked overtime and rushed to ship orders. A large amount of material resources are constantly being shipped from Chinese ports to all over the world.
I have a friend who is in export business. Someone asked him last year: "Your company's products are quite niche. Is the business affected by the epidemic?" He replied very much in Versailles: "The impact is quite big, and I work overtime every day to catch up with the goods. , Busy interviewing new employees."
Second, except for China, other countries are in a state of material shortage, and their demand for materials is far greater than that of China. Several things that China lacks have been banned by the United States. This has led to Europe and the United States needing Chinese things, but China is not so much. Need European and American things.
Based on the above two effects, after a large number of huge ships full of cargo arrived in Europe and America, a serious problem was discovered, that is, they did not have so many cargoes to be shipped back to China.
You can't go back to China empty boat. So the major shipping companies started to cut prices frantically. The price of shipping from the United States to China is only a fraction of that from China to the United States. But no matter how the price is lowered, there will be so many goods, and there will always be ships that have to go back empty. In addition, unable to withstand the temptation of soaring freight rates from China to the United States, the captains decided not to wait for the empty ship to return.
It is precisely because the captains are unwilling to waste time waiting for these containers to be unloaded before loading them, more and more containers are being stranded in European and American ports. Because everyone thinks that China has containers. More than 96% of dry cargo containers and 100% of refrigerated containers in the world are produced in China.
With the increasing number of empty ships returning to China, the containers used to load the goods are not enough. All the containers in China have been pulled out for use. Even the rusty containers that have been used for more than ten years have also been pulled out for shipping, but in the end they were not enough.
According to market laws, supply exceeds demand, and it must be resolved by increasing prices. As a result, the price of containers in China began to rise frantically, rising exponentially, far exceeding the increase in raw materials.
The container itself has become an expensive cargo, not just a loading tool.
When the price of containers has risen to a staggering level, many people find that there are many containers in the world, all piled up in European and American ports. This thing is not valuable at all. Why do you have to spend so much money in China? Buy new ones and use up disposable items.
As a result, the captains were reluctant to leave such a precious container at the pier and were willing to spend time waiting. Now is the golden time of shipping. Every minute is money. The captains have no time to wait for loading in European and American ports. They fill their ships with empty containers.
CNBC's investigation revealed that a large number of shipping companies refused to pack agricultural products from the United States because they wereted a lot of time and sent empty containers directly to China.
In this way, a metal container has become an expensive material for European and American countries, and it is worth transporting more than the goods themselves.
