Industry analysts pointed out that with the outbreak of e-commerce demand and inventory replenishment reaching a new level, the prosperity of container shipping industry is expected to continue to 2022.

Professionals said that from the demand side, the surge in freight demand will continue until the second quarter of this year, and the current freight volume is still at a historical high. Although there are signs that consumer demand is beginning to slow down slightly, it is still unclear when demand will return to normal.

MSI predicts that the container shipping volume will increase by about 7% in 2021, and the growth may continue until 2022. At the same time, with the increase of container availability and the gradual elimination of logistics bottlenecks, spot freight rates will decline in the next few quarters. Alan Murphy, CEO of sea intelligence, said that the volume loss of the container industry in the first half of 2020 was evenly distributed in all markets, but the volume growth since August 2020 was mainly reflected in the North American market. According to Murphy, it's the American consumers who really drive the recovery. Although US export volume has continued to grow since the third quarter of 2020, future demand growth will depend on retail inventory levels. Murphy said that although the overall consumption expenditure in the United States was lower than that before the epidemic, the expenditure on goods exceeded that on services, which benefited container transportation. With the elimination of epidemic prevention restrictions, a large part of these expenditures will go back to the service sector. It should be pointed out that although the restart of service spending may lead to the contraction of consumer spending on goods, e-commerce will continue to be hot for some time due to the unfinished replenishment of inventory.