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2021/2/8 11:12:00 0

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On January 26, Pan Qi, business manager of Zhejiang Huanfeng Textile Co., Ltd., spent 1500 yuan to "grab" a "cattle cabinet". It is not only panqi, many foreign trade enterprises in charge said in the interview, more or less ordered some "cattle cabinet.". Why does an empty box cost extra? See below

The soaring global shipping costs have strangled the "throat" of Zhejiang foreign trade enterprises.

Since the second half of 2020, the cost of international shipping has continued to rise, and the freight of some routes has increased by 10 times, and foreign trade enterprises have called "unable to afford it". Not only that, since October last year, the problem of "one container is difficult to obtain" has been further highlighted, which makes the enterprise unable to deliver goods and a large amount of inventory is stagnant.

It is said that as long as foreign trade enterprises have orders in hand, they will not panic. But now, no shortage of orders, lack of "empty box" foreign trade enterprises, and how to deal with the new test?

The profits are all eaten up by logistics expenses

"Last year, our foreign trade orders increased by more than 30% over the previous year." In Quzhou Zhejiang YONGLIDA CNC Technology Co., Ltd., chairman Chen Shenggang just got the company's statistics for 2020. This is the fastest growth of the company's business in recent years. But Chen Sheng was not happy: Although there were many orders, he didn't make money.

Since the second half of last year, the cost of international shipping began to rise: in the past, the freight rate of a container to North America was about US $1000 or US $2000, but in a few months it has risen to US $4500. At that time, Chen Sheng also thought: wait, maybe the logistics costs will gradually fall.

I didn't expect that after that, the shipping price was like riding a rocket and soaring all the way. By the end of January this year, the cost of shipping a container to the United States would cost more than 10000 US dollars, almost 10 times that before the epidemic.

Fortunately, like most foreign trade enterprises in Zhejiang, the contracts signed by YONGLIDA CNC with its customers are mostly FOB prices, that is, the products are calculated on FOB basis. In other words, the international logistics costs are borne by the customers.

But in the face of soaring freight, many foreign customers also put forward new requirements for Chen Sheng: not to bear part of the freight, or to lower the product price.

Chen Sheng helplessly said: "our profit is not high, the maximum price reduction of 5%, but compared with the rising logistics costs, this seems to be a bit of a drop in the bucket."

Compared with Chen Sheng, the life of Chen Shuirong, chairman of Changxing Hailian Textile Co., Ltd., may be more difficult. He signed an order with a big customer in Mexico on CIF price (including insurance and freight). "According to the contract, logistics costs have to be borne by us." Chen Shuirong calculated that to complete the order in hand, they would lose at least 10 million yuan.

Chen Shuirong told yongjinjun that in the past, it used to cost 2600 dollars for a container to be transported to Mexico, but now it has risen to 9500 dollars. Chen Shuirong said that the value of a container of textiles exported by them is 40000 US dollars, and the rising logistics costs have already covered the original profits of the enterprise.

In the factory area of Huaxi street in Changxing, Chen Shuirong can see goods piled up in the open air everywhere from his office. Piles of white cloth piled high, two people to high. Because of the stock burst, the capital week changes slowly, Chen Shuirong is under double pressure. He gritted his teeth and said: if you lose, you will lose. If you send the goods early, you can reduce some financial pressure.

Not only the American routes, but almost all the international routes under the epidemic situation are soaring. Zang Shanxin, general manager of Changxing Shengyue Textile Technology Co., Ltd., told reporters that the freight of ships sailing to his main markets, such as India, Pakistan and Africa, has also increased four or five times. For example, freight to Pakistan has risen from $550 per container before the outbreak to $3800.

Fortunately, Zang Shanxin, who had been making CIF orders before, changed all new orders to fob mode since March last year. "Because our market is relatively segmented and our products are competitive, international merchants have to bear all logistics costs." In his view, the rise in logistics costs under the epidemic is a kind of market behavior, which is beyond reproach. "Of course, shipping companies are afraid to take advantage of this opportunity to make a lot of money."

However, the profit rate of shipping enterprises in this wave of market is still beyond Zang's expectation. According to the financial report of the third quarter of 2020 released by evergreen shipping, one of the top ten international shipping companies, the net profit after tax in the third quarter of 2020 is as high as NT $8.185 billion, a year-on-year increase of more than 59 times. In one quarter, it has won the total profit of the past three years.

"Scalpers" still have to rely on empty containers

On January 26, Pan Qi, business manager of Zhejiang Huanfeng Textile Co., Ltd., spent 1500 yuan to "grab" a "cattle cabinet". It is not only panqi, many foreign trade enterprises in charge said in the interview, more or less ordered some "cattle cabinet.".

What is a "yellow cow container"? Pan Qi explained that it is the empty container index that can be obtained by the freight forwarding company by adding extra money in addition to the normal channels.

"Now not only is international logistics expensive, but more troublesome is that empty containers are scarce, and foreign trade enterprises can't send goods out." He said that sometimes, because the delivery time is approaching, enterprises can only pay extra in addition to the freight to order containers. It is understood that the general "cattle cabinet" in the extra cost of 1000 to 2000 yuan.

"As a container is difficult to obtain, the additional cost borne by enterprises is far more than that." Pan Qi said that now they need to "pre pick" the containers and occupy the shipping space a few days in advance to avoid missing the original voyage due to the temporary inability to book containers, which was rare in the past. As a result, the enterprise has an extra cost of two or three thousand yuan.

The scarcity of containers has seriously affected the shipment of enterprises. The reason lies in the shortage of containers.

Why are containers so scarce? According to an analysis by a person in charge of an international logistics enterprise, the overseas epidemic continues to spread, and the operation efficiency of ports in Europe and the United States is declining. A large number of containers are either idle in foreign ports or queuing up at foreign ports for unloading.

At the same time, domestic and foreign trade orders continued to grow, and the demand for containers increased significantly. One increase and one decrease, resulting in a serious imbalance between the number of containers going out of China and the number of returned containers.

Poor shipping has also led to higher prices for air freight and China Europe trains, as well as the scarcity of shipping space. Li Lizhong told yongjinjun: "it turns out that the price of a standard container on the China Europe Express is US $56000. By the end of November, it has risen to more than $10000."

In response to various logistics problems, the relevant departments have started to take action.

On January 8, Ningbo municipal government issued some opinions on how to deal with the problem of shortage of space and container in cross-border logistics, and put forward ten measures, such as increasing the capacity of routes, ensuring the supply of empty containers, and stabilizing the price of freight containers. According to the opinions, Ningbo will encourage and guide shipping companies to increase the supply of routes and transport capacity at Ningbo port, and do a good job of empty container return.

At present, Hangzhou Customs is also further optimizing the empty container clearance process, using the information system to carry out data analysis in advance, unified implementation of intelligent management and control, to achieve the arrival of empty container inspection and release procedures at one time, to eliminate the secondary lifting procedures of enterprises, further reduce logistics costs and improve the efficiency of empty container circulation.

Zhejiang Provincial Department of economy and information technology has issued the notice on supporting container manufacturing enterprises to expand production capacity. In view of the prominent problems existing in the periodical capacity expansion of container manufacturing enterprises, the whole process service, precision service and linkage service are carried out to help them rapidly expand their production capacity.

In addition to accelerating the return of empty containers and other measures, many foreign trade enterprise leaders said that regulating the shipping market is also the key. "Although the rise in international shipping prices is mainly caused by changes in market supply and demand, there are also some factors of artificial speculation." The head of a foreign trade enterprise said that the relevant departments should standardize the industry management and charging standards, increase the transparency of freight and container charges, and crack down on the behavior of indiscriminate charging and driving up freight.

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