Ocean Oct 13, 2026 · 7 min read

Container rates after Golden Week: the transpacific holds high while Asia-Europe slides

Transpacific rates hold near their peak while Asia-Europe keeps sliding. Drewry’s World Container Index fell 2% to US$4,351 per 40-foot container (FEU) on 8 October. Our view: this is a slow drift, not a crash. The two main trades are splitting apart. Shanghai–Los Angeles slipped 3% to US$7,624, while Shanghai–Rotterdam is at US$3,337, less than half of that. Xeneta’s Peter Sand called the first West Coast dip “a marginal move, but the first dip since mid-September”. Forwarders should keep transpacific quotes short and push Europe tenders now. Our call: Shanghai–Rotterdam on the Drewry index goes below US$3,000 by mid-November.

After Golden Week, container rates split in two: the transpacific holds its peak and Asia-Europe keeps sliding

Drewry’s World Container Index (WCI) fell 2% to US$4,351 per 40-foot container (FEU) in its 8 October assessment. The WCI is a weekly average of spot rates on eight major east-west routes. A spot rate is the price for a one-off shipment booked now, as opposed to a contract rate agreed for months ahead.

This was the first full reading after Golden Week, China’s National Day holiday, which ran from 1 to 7 October this year. Factories close, bookings pause, and carriers usually cancel sailings around it. The weeks after the holiday tend to show where the market really stands.

Our reading is that a single headline number now hides two separate markets. The transpacific (Asia to the US) is levelling off at a very high price. Asia-Europe is in a steady, orderly decline. Forwarders who quote both trades the same way will get one of them wrong.

What the indices said last week

Every major index moved only a little last week. That is a sign of a market pausing, not turning.

According to Container News, which compiled the readings on 12 October:

Drewry WCI composite: down 2% to US$4,351 per FEU.
Shanghai–Los Angeles: down 3% to US$7,624.
Shanghai–New York: down 2% to US$10,220.
Shanghai–Rotterdam: down 2% to US$3,337.
Shanghai–Genoa: broadly unchanged at US$3,696.
Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI): up 0.05% to 3,664.11 points.
China Containerized Freight Index (CCFI): down 0.6% to 1,912.38.
Ningbo Containerized Freight Index (NCFI): down about 1.5% to 2,431.78.
Freightos Baltic Index (FBX): US$3,344, against US$3,343 the week before.

The NYSHEX Freight Index (NYFI), published 9 October, showed a similar split. Asia–US West Coast fell 1.98% to 7,407.75. Asia–US East Coast rose 1.40% to 9,831.24. Asia–North Europe fell 3.24% to 3,356.23, after a 3.58% fall the week before.

Different indices measure different things. The WCI and FBX are in US dollars per box. The SCFI, CCFI and NCFI are index points. So the useful signal is the direction across all of them. That direction is flat to slightly down.

The transpacific: a plateau, not a fall

Xeneta’s daily data gives a closer view. FreightWaves reported on 9 October that Far East–US West Coast spot rates stood at US$8,336 per FEU, 1.1% above the 30 September level. But on 7 October the rate fell by US$2.

Peter Sand, Xeneta’s chief analyst, put it this way: “It is a marginal move, but the first dip since mid-September”. Two dollars is nothing on a US$8,000 box. The point is the change of direction after weeks of gains.

The East Coast is still edging up. Xeneta had Asia–US East Coast at an average of US$11,512 per FEU, up 0.5% over the week.

Drewry’s own figures from three weeks earlier show how little has changed. On 17 September, according to Hellenic Shipping News, the WCI had Shanghai–Los Angeles at US$7,712 and Shanghai–New York at US$10,394. That means Los Angeles has fallen about 1% in three weeks and New York about 2%. At the time, Drewry said it expected transpacific rates “to rise slightly next week amid impending pre-Golden Week demand”. The holiday rush came and went, and rates barely moved either way.

Carriers are banking it. Hong Kong carrier OOCL reported third-quarter liner revenue of US$3.28 billion, up 45.1% year on year, on 2.12 million TEU (20-foot equivalent units, the standard measure of container volume), according to FreightWaves on 12 October. Its transpacific revenue rose 71.8% to US$1.44 billion while transpacific volume rose only 13.1%. Average revenue per TEU across the business rose 33.1%. Most of that extra money came from higher prices, not from carrying more boxes.

Asia-Europe: a slow, steady slide

Asia-Europe looks very different. On the WCI, Shanghai–Rotterdam was US$3,626 on 17 September and US$3,337 on 8 October, a drop of about 8%. Shanghai–Genoa fell from US$4,016 to US$3,696 over the same three weeks, also about 8%.

Xeneta’s numbers are similar. Far East–North Europe averaged US$3,645 per FEU on 7 October, down 2.5% from 30 September. Asia–Mediterranean fell harder, down 5.9% to US$4,007. Measured from 1 July, Xeneta said Mediterranean market-average spot rates are down 43% and North Europe rates are down 34%.

Sand said: “The pace of the decline has eased a little, but rates are still elevated and the trend is still downward”. He added: “For European shippers, tender season is in full force and falling short-term rates are a welcome development”. A tender is when a shipper invites carriers and forwarders to bid for its contract volume for the coming year.

The gap between the two Europe routes is closing. Xeneta put the Mediterranean premium over North Europe at about US$400 per FEU now, against about US$2,000 on 1 January 2026. As Sand said: “The spread between the Mediterranean and North Europe shows that no two trades are alike”.

Drewry already saw this coming. On 17 September it said it expected Asia-Europe rates “to decline slightly next week, as demand remains weak”. Three weeks on, both Europe routes are lower.

The smaller lanes and the ports

The transatlantic is mixed. On the NYFI, transatlantic westbound (Europe to the US) fell 0.52% to 2,709.05, while eastbound (US to Europe) jumped 8.23% to 1,282.09. Eastbound is the smaller, cheaper direction, so a big percentage move there starts from a low base. Xeneta had North Europe–US East Coast at US$2,854 per FEU, down 1.1% on the week.

Port delays in China are another factor to watch. In mid-September, Drewry reported waiting time at Shanghai of 78 hours in week 37, up from 65 hours the week before. It said at the time: “Asian port congestion and pre-Golden Week demand will remain key factors for the market in the coming weeks.” Delays at origin tie up ships and can hold rates up even when demand softens. If those queues clear after the holiday, more capacity comes back to market, which adds pressure on rates.

Still a boom by any longer measure

None of this means freight is cheap. The WCI composite was US$1,806 per FEU in Drewry’s 27 November 2025 assessment, as reported by Hellenic Shipping News. Today’s US$4,351 is about 2.4 times that. Splash247 noted on 12 October that the SCFI, at 3,664 points, is 215% higher than a year ago.

Splash247 also cited broker Hartland, which wrote: “Wars in Europe and the Middle East have rendered the Middle East Gulf, Red Sea and Black Sea unsafe for shipping”. Longer routes around closed waters soak up ships, and that keeps rates high. Broker Affinity wrote that “this cycle is being driven by the geopolitical environment which show no signs of abating”.

So the question for forwarders is not whether rates are high. It is which way each trade is heading from here, and how fast.

What this means for forwarders

On the transpacific, carriers still hold the pricing power. A US$2 dip is not leverage. Our advice is to keep quote validity short, two weeks at most, and to build in room for surcharges. If the plateau turns into a slide, you can pass the savings on. If it does not, you are not stuck holding a loss on a long quote. Watch the gap between West Coast and East Coast. The East Coast is still rising while the West Coast stalls, which could change routing advice for inland US cargo.

On Asia-Europe, the buyer now has the upper hand. This is the time to push for lower contract rates in European tenders, and to ask carriers for better terms on 2027 volume. Sand said: “Even freight forwarders are now getting better deals from carriers in long-term contract negotiations”. For Mediterranean cargo, the shrinking premium over North Europe means some customers may be able to rethink which port they use.

For shippers buying on both trades, the split matters for budgets. One rate assumption for “Asia exports” no longer works. A transpacific box costs more than twice an Asia–North Europe box on the WCI: US$7,624 to Los Angeles against US$3,337 to Rotterdam.

The next readings are due this week: Drewry’s WCI on Thursday 15 October and the SCFI on Friday 16 October. Those numbers will show whether the West Coast dip of 7 October was a blip or the start of a trend. That matters for November quotes and validity windows.

Our call

We think the two trades keep pulling apart through the rest of the year. Our prediction: by mid-November, Drewry’s Shanghai–Rotterdam rate will be below US$3,000 per FEU, while Shanghai–Los Angeles stays above US$7,000. We also expect the WCI composite to be lower in mid-November than its 8 October level of US$4,351, driven mainly by Asia-Europe rather than the transpacific.

Sources