The big container crisis is a thing of the past, shipping prices fell by four fifths in a year

• Drewry’s Shipping Price Index fell 3 percent this week, having already lost 80 percent for the year.
• As the global economy has cooled, demand for sea freight has fallen, and freight forwarders expect low prices to persist.

Shipping prices continue to fall, and with a bit of luck, sending a container halfway across the globe will be cheaper than before the pandemic. The great container crisis, which contributed significantly to the increase in inflation in the last two years, is over.

The World Container Index (WCI), which is calculated by logistics company Drewry, fell by 3 percent for the week and has already lost 80 percent compared to the same period last year, the Chart of the Day shows. The weekly index expresses the average price of transporting a standard 12-meter container after the eight most important