Dimerco sees Asian freight peak extending into October

Dimerco Express Group says Asia’s freight peak is extending into October, although the pressure is no longer moving uniformly across air and ocean markets. Technology exports continue to fill aircraft from several manufacturing centres, while typhoons, port congestion, holiday schedules, and blank sailings are restricting effective ocean capacity at the same time as some Asia-Europe rates begin to soften.

Taiwan remains one of the tighter air freight origins as AI servers, semiconductors, high performance computing equipment, and electronic components sustain demand towards the United States and within Asia. South Korea is also experiencing constrained conditions around the Chuseok period, with some Southeast Asian services requiring bookings well ahead of departure, whereas several Chinese gateways retain a more balanced position on long-haul routes despite pre-holiday and e-commerce pressure. The regional picture consequently depends less on whether air freight is broadly tight than on the origin, destination, commodity, and departure week attached to each shipment.

Ocean operations are being disrupted by a different combination of pressures, particularly where weather delays and carrier capacity management overlap with congestion. Shanghai is expected to remain heavily congested into mid to late October, with berthing delays above five days, while Yantian is dealing with pressure on empty container availability and intake restrictions; blank sailings around the holiday period further reduce the number of usable departures. Capacity that exists on a published schedule is of limited value when a vessel is omitted, a port call slips, or equipment cannot reach the shipper in time for loading.

Conditions across Southeast Asia add another layer of variation, with Singapore carrying backlog pressure and Thailand contending with flooding related disruption around Bangkok, while India enters its festive period with tighter space on selected air and ocean services towards Europe and the United States. Those local constraints follow technology-led pressure already visible across Asian air freight in September, leaving several manufacturing corridors with little room for unplanned shifts from sea to air when an ocean movement misses its intended sailing.

Europe-bound ocean freight is moving in the opposite direction on parts of the market as more services return through the Suez Canal and additional capacity weighs on rates. Lower ocean pricing does not necessarily improve the complete journey, however, because German port disruption and low Rhine water levels can still interrupt inland movement after the box reaches Europe. Procurement built around the port-to-port price therefore risks understating the operational cost of a route where the maritime leg becomes cheaper while inland reliability deteriorates.

The divergence also makes broad freight indices less useful for individual booking decisions. A regional average can sit between a severe shortage at one origin and excess space at another without accurately describing either, so shipment planning increasingly depends on sailing-level information, equipment availability, terminal conditions, and carrier behaviour. Dimerco is recommending bookings one to two weeks ahead for constrained intra-Asia ocean movements and two to three weeks ahead on long-haul services, giving shippers more protection against rolled cargo but less exposure to any subsequent fall in rates.

That trade-off becomes commercial rather than theoretical when freight supports production. A shipment carrying components required on a fixed manufacturing schedule can justify committed capacity at a higher price because the cost of missing a vessel exceeds the saving available from waiting for a softer market, whereas replenishment inventory with more time in hand can remain exposed to spot pricing. Segmenting freight by consequence rather than applying one purchasing rule across every shipment allows the same procurement team to buy certainty where failure is expensive and flexibility where delay is tolerable.

China-Europe rail provides an additional option on suitable movements, with Dimerco quoting transit times of roughly 15 to 24 days on major routes. Rail cannot absorb the full range of ocean or air freight, and capacity, origin access, border handling, and cargo characteristics still determine whether it is practical, but it occupies useful ground between slow maritime services and expensive air transport when schedules become unstable. Its value rises when operators have already arranged the route and documentation, rather than discovering it only after the preferred sailing has been cancelled.

Contract strategy becomes correspondingly harder when neighbouring lanes move in different directions. Securing a large capacity commitment protects service on routes where space remains scarce, although it can leave a shipper paying above market if returning Suez capacity continues to weaken Europe-bound ocean pricing; relying heavily on spot procurement creates the reverse exposure when disruption suddenly removes departures. A mixed approach, with contracted space concentrated around production critical flows and more flexible buying applied elsewhere, gives procurement teams some protection against both outcomes provided shipment data is good enough to separate the two groups.

Dimerco’s October assessment extends the tight conditions recorded in September but adds a more fragmented picture, with technology demand supporting air freight, weather and congestion eroding ocean reliability, and additional Suez capacity pressing down on selected rates. The traditional idea of a single Asian peak season is becoming a poor description of a market in which one lane can be easing while another, sometimes from the same country, requires bookings weeks in advance.