By Ashley Kao   Photo：master1305，Link：freepik

According to Steve, deputy chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Industries, shippers are waiting up to 10 weeks for vessel space, with freight rates reaching $15,000 to send a 40ft container to the US.
For dangerous goods (DG) the rate even reaches $25,000 and you still need to wait for weeks for an empty container or a space on board. These days, DG means any electrical product with lithium batteries. Clients will pay whatever the forwarders and carriers quote, and yet, there’s still no container and people have to wait. Most carriers won’t even accept DG goods, because they’re doing good business with general cargo. 
Besides, the cost for storing cargo at factories to wait for available shipping schedule is very high, also need to add cost for security and insurance fee. Steve said we need to stock more product, which ties up millions and millions in cashflow, which is really big trouble for Hong Kong’s manufacturers.
Another trouble was Hapag-Lloyd’s latest “value-added” surcharge, which was $5,000 fee added on shipments from Hong Kong to the US was more than the entire freight rate on the same route back in two years ago.
However, for Chinese exporters, airfreight is too expensive to be an alternative, and the capacity of China-Europe rail freight was still very low. These two modes of transport can hardly step in and solve the excessive demand for shipping.