The emergency linked to the empty container shortage, which we talked about in this article, and the increase in freight costs have caused an international trade imbalance. The logistics and sea freight costs have considerably increased. Freight rates have even increased fivefold in several trade routes such as that between China and Italy.
In our country, especially in the Northeast Italy, exports began to grow again after the pandemic and the decrease in freight traffic in 2020. The container shipping market has in fact started to increase in the first months of 2021: the Istat statistics shows an increase in exports compared to 2020 and 2019. The interport of Padova, Verona, Pordenone and the important port of Trieste show positive data since the beginning of the year. Specifically, the interport of Padova shows an increase of 30% in Teu compared to 2020; even the port of Trieste foresees upcoming growth trend in traffic volumes. However, the future prospects cannot be considered positive given the higher prices for logistics, especially for sea freight rates, in addition to rising material costs. The president of Assosped Venezia, Andrea Scarpa, underlines the complexity of the situation in which freight forwarders have difficulty in finding containers for their shipments. This situation is caused mainly by the imbalance between production and demand for goods, which has intensified particularly since the beginning of the covid-19 with evident repercussions in the transport sector.
