FBX Weekly Ocean rates stable and SMBs getting resilient as eCommerce surges

China-US ocean rates have now gone unchanged for a month, following complaints and scrutiny of already sky-high prices. Ocean carriers cancelled any planned mid-month rate increases, with some announcing that GRIs would be postponed until mid-November despite very full ships. 

Ocean capacity has been tight partially due to the surge in eCommerce during the pandemic. With much of that inventory now targeting holiday shoppers and warnings of a shortage of last-mile capacity to get those orders to consumers, some are warning of an impending “shipagedon” of delays and disruptions.

Last week’s Prime Day may have officially kicked off the eCommerce peak season, with record sales during the event and a 60% annual increase in sales by third party sellers on its marketplace. 

In the lead up to Prime Day, SMB importers – many of them Amazon sellers – booking freight on the Freightos.com marketplace shipped a record number of orders in July, and a 24% annual increase in August.

But shipments through Freightos directly to FBA warehouses fell during that same period, likely in response to Amazon’s latest inventory restrictions for third party sellers. In some cases, the reduction in shipments to FBA warehouses is because importers were forced to split shipments and send some to forwarder warehouses first in order to stay under the required SKU limitation imposed by Amazon FBA.

- Eytan Buchman, CMO