Ocean Oct 10, 2026 · 8 min read

Intra-Asia rates ease from a post-Covid high, but Asia–Gulf stays very expensive

Intra-Asia box rates slip 1% after a record run, but Shanghai–Jebel Ali holds at $8,662. Drewry’s Intra-Asia Container Index fell 1% to $1,503 per 40ft container in its latest weekly reading, ending six straight weekly gains, according to The Loadstar. It is still up 209% on a year ago. We read this as a pause, not a turn. Rates held flat through Golden Week, China’s early-October holiday, after falling 12% last year. Shanghai–Jebel Ali sits at $8,662, almost six times the index. Few new feeder ships, the small vessels that link regional ports to hubs, keep short-sea legs tight. Our call: the index drifts lower through November but stays above $1,300, and the Gulf lane stays above $8,000 to year-end.

Intra-Asia box rates fall 1% after six weeks of gains, but Shanghai–Jebel Ali holds at $8,662
Drewry’s Intra-Asia Container Index fell 1% to $1,503 per 40ft container in its latest weekly reading. That ended six straight weeks of gains, according to The Loadstar. Even after the dip, the index is 209% higher than a year ago.
The index, known as the IACI, is a weighted average of spot rates on 18 routes inside Asia, including Shanghai–Singapore and Busan–Shanghai. One of those 18 routes, Shanghai–Jebel Ali, is priced in a different world from the rest. It sits at $8,662 per 40ft, almost six times the composite.
Our view is simple. This is a pause, not a turn. The intra-Asia market is being held up by things that do not go away in a week: expensive fuel, too few small ships, congested Chinese ports and a war in the Gulf. The first two of those will still be true at Christmas.

What moved this week

The Loadstar’s Alison Koo, reporting Drewry’s figures on 9 October, says intra-Asia rates hit “a post-Covid high prior to China’s Golden Week holiday”. Golden Week is China’s national holiday in the first week of October. Factories slow down, bookings dry up and rates usually fall.
This year they did not. The index “remained largely unchanged during Golden Week, compared with a 12% decline during the same period last year”, according to The Loadstar. Drewry’s figures from last October show how soft the market was then. The index fell 12% in the first half of October 2025 to $487 per 40ft, its lowest since April 2024, according to Drewry’s report on Hellenic Shipping News.
Lane by lane, the moves were small. Shanghai–Laem Chabang, Shanghai–Manila and Shanghai–Yokohama each fell 3% from 1 October, to $1,690, $1,027 and $1,052 per 40ft. Shanghai–Singapore and Shanghai–Tanjung Pelepas each rose 2%, to $2,123 and $2,100. Shanghai–Jebel Ali stayed at $8,662.
A week earlier, Drewry said its composite index had reached an all-time high for the sixth week in a row, at $1,518. That record needs one footnote. Drewry only launched the IACI in September 2024, so “all-time” covers a short history. The Loadstar’s “post-Covid” framing is the fairer one.

Why we think this is a pause

The reasons rates climbed are mostly still in place.
Fuel is the first. Brent crude has traded above $100 a barrel since early September, according to Drewry. CMA CGM brought in a $75 per TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) emergency fuel surcharge on all intra-regional trades from 1 October. In August, Drewry reported that carriers had added emergency fuel surcharges of $38–75 per TEU on short-haul regional lanes after renewed hostilities around the Strait of Hormuz. On short routes, where the base freight is a few hundred dollars, a surcharge of that size is a big share of the bill.
Ports are the second. Drewry said average waiting times in week 39 were 82 hours at Shanghai and 56 hours at Ningbo, after typhoons and vessel bunching. Ships that sit at anchor are not carrying cargo, which takes real capacity out of the market. Carriers also used blank sailings, meaning cancelled voyages, and skipped port calls to keep capacity tight, according to Drewry.
The third is demand. Before the holiday, Drewry pointed to strong pre-Golden Week demand from China to Southeast and South Asia. Drewry’s own outlook is for rates to “stabilise in the coming weeks as the Golden Week volume dip helps clear backlogs”. Stabilise is not the same as fall.

The Gulf is its own market

Shanghai–Jebel Ali is the outlier, and it climbed through August and September. Drewry had it at $7,143 per 40ft in its report of 10 August and $8,712 on 25 September. It has now sat at $8,662 for two weeks running. By comparison, Shanghai–Singapore, a busy hub route, is $2,123.
The cause is the Strait of Hormuz. Jebel Ali sits inside the Persian Gulf, so most ships calling there must pass through the strait. According to Marine Insight, the strait came close to shutting from March, then reopened only partially and unevenly in June. Jebel Ali handled 3.14 million TEU in the first half of 2026, down from 7.77 million a year earlier. In the second quarter alone, volumes fell by more than 90%. The port dropped from 10th to 32nd in the world rankings, citing Alphaliner.
Cargo has not vanished. It has moved. Colombo climbed the rankings as lines changed some Gulf services and sent more traffic to other transshipment hubs, and Nhava Sheva also moved up, according to Marine Insight. DP World has moved 500,000 TEU by road and rail across the Gulf states since March. Every extra leg, by truck, train or a second ship, adds cost and days.
This is a war price. It will not ease because of new ships in Southeast Asia or a quiet week in China. It eases when ships can sail into the Gulf normally again.

Feeders are the real bottleneck

Most intra-Asia cargo moves on feeders. These are smaller ships that shuttle boxes between regional ports and big hubs like Singapore, Port Klang and Tanjung Pelepas.
There are not enough of them. Analysts at Linerlytica said this week that the lack of new feeder capacity is adding to the intra-Asia shortage, according to The Loadstar. They singled out the “Bangkok-max” class, ships sized to reach Bangkok’s river port, where only five have been delivered so far this year.
The orderbook tells the same story. Ships below 4,000 TEU make up 14.6% of the global orderbook by capacity, against an industry average of 35.9%, according to Liner Research Services, quoted by The Edge Malaysia in April. Ooi Lean Hin, managing director of Malaysian feeder operator MTT Shipping, put it plainly in the same article: “Shipyards are full, and the pipeline for smaller vessels remains limited.”
The charter market agrees. Daniel Richards of Maritime Strategies International told Seatrade Maritime in August that “it remains very much a vessel owners’ market”. He said carriers are still trying to add ships, especially below 8,000 TEU, where fleet growth is limited. When owners hold the power, carriers pay more for ships, and shippers pay more for slots.
Some relief is on the way, but it is narrow. OOCL plans to launch a China–Cambodia–Thailand service on 23 October, according to Drewry. From 8 November, RCL, PIL, HMM and Shanghai Jin Jiang Shipping plan a weekly China–Indonesia–Straits service, according to The Loadstar. It replaces an existing joint service, so the net gain is smaller than it looks. Both services cover China–Southeast Asia. Neither touches the Gulf.

What happened last time

We have seen an intra-Asia spike unwind before. In 2024, when the charter market was “effectively sold out for the larger vessels”, in the words of a Linerlytica report quoted by The Loadstar that July, the IACI peaked at $1,025 in the second half of July. By mid-September 2024, it had fallen 35% to $668, according to Drewry’s launch notice reported by ITLN.
So intra-Asia rates can fall fast. The difference now is the cost base underneath them. In 2024, the Strait of Hormuz was open. Today, oil is above $100, surcharges are written into tariffs, and a key hub is still mostly cut off. A 35% drop from $1,503 would take the index to about $980. We do not see that happening this year.

What forwarders should do, and what we expect

The base freight on short Asian routes may soften a little. The all-in cost will not move much. Fuel surcharges and congestion costs are doing a lot of the work.
For quoting, keep validity short and show fuel surcharges as a separate line. A $75 per TEU surcharge can be pulled or raised with little notice. Clients who have only seen a single all-in number tend to push back hard when it changes.
On China–Southeast Asia lanes, the new OOCL and RCL-PIL-HMM-Jin Jiang capacity is where any softening will show first. Shippers on those routes should avoid locking long contracts at today’s peak.
For the Gulf, price it as a separate market. Ask carriers for routing in writing: direct, via another hub like Colombo or Nhava Sheva, or by road from another port. Build the landside leg into the quote. Warn clients about transit times as well as price.
Backhauls stay cheap. Busan–Shanghai was $146 per 40ft and Yokohama–Shanghai $116 in Drewry’s report of 5 October. Cargo heading into China is not where the pressure is.
Our call: the IACI drifts lower through November as Golden Week backlogs clear and new China–Southeast Asia services start. We expect it to stay above $1,300 per 40ft through the end of November, still more than two and a half times the $487 of mid-October 2025. Shanghai–Jebel Ali stays above $8,000 until year-end unless ships can again sail into the Gulf normally. If Brent stays above $100, expect more carriers to follow CMA CGM with fuel surcharges on regional trades within six weeks.

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