Why a box from Busan to Rotterdam cost $3,140 this week

Busan to Rotterdam spot, 40ft

$3,140-9%

TEU a week taken out by skipped Klang calls

41,000

Asia to North Europe loops that skipped Klang

3 of 9

Three of nine Asia to North Europe loops skipped Port Klang in September. None of them announced a blank sailing. Taken together, the omitted calls pulled about 41,000 TEU of weekly capacity out of the lane, and nobody had to call it a cancellation.

Nordica approaching the Port of Rotterdam, September 2025. Photo: Alf van Beem, CC0.

I found this by doing the dullest possible thing: opening the schedule feeds on a Tuesday and checking, service by service, whether each loop’s rotation still listed the port it listed last month. Three did not. On each, the Klang call was replaced by an extra day at sea, with an unchanged service code and an unchanged first and last port. A reader skimming the carrier website would see a weekly service from Busan to Rotterdam, as before.

The effect on prices was not what you would expect. Removing capacity should raise rates, and for two weeks it did. Then, on the fourth week, spot rates on Busan to Rotterdam fell from $3,450 to $3,140, a drop of 9%, while the contract rate index barely moved. Here is the explanation I believe.