The global container shipping market is entering the second half of 2026 with a potentially uncomfortable combination for retailers: strong cargo demand, rising freight rates and a logistics infrastructure increasingly struggling to keep pace. <\/p>\n
Second-quarter results from Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd showed that demand remains resilient despite tariffs, geopolitical turmoil and higher energy costs, with both carriers benefiting from the increasing container prices. <\/p>\n
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But their earnings calls also pointed to a more structural problem developing across the supply chain. The bottleneck is increasingly shifting from ships to the ports, terminals, trucks, railroads and other infrastructure<\/a> needed to move cargo once it reaches the land. <\/p>\n “Infrastructure is stretched to the maximum,” said Maersk<\/a> CEO Vincent Clerc in a Thursday earnings call, who called the landside “underinvested” while stressing “it’s not just a terminal thing.” <\/p>\n “We will see rate events much more frequently” as more bottlenecks within the supply chain arise, he said. “It’s really hard to forecast when we start to have this.” <\/p>\n Maersk’s second-quarter revenue jumped 20 percent year over year to $15.8 billion, with net income reaching $1.3 billion and pre-tax profit hitting $1.6 billion. Freight rates<\/a> were the top driver, increasing 22 percent to $2,746 per 40-foot container, ultimately powering the company’s ocean freight segment to a 23 percent jump in revenue to $10.5 billion. <\/p>\n Hapag-Lloyd<\/a>‘s recovery from its weaker first quarter<\/a> was less dramatic but followed the same trajectory. Revenue rose 11 percent to $5.8 billion, while net income totaled $83 million on an EBIT of $176 million. The average freight rate climbed 9 percent percent year over year to $1,475 per 20-foot container (TEU). <\/p>\n Both carriers have subsequently become more bullish on the remainder of the year. Maersk raised its full-year earnings guidance for the second time in six weeks<\/a>, expecting EBIT guidance of $4.5 billion to $6.5 billion instead of a range between $2 billion and $4 billion. <\/p>\n Hapag-Lloyd’s forecast increase came earlier in July, when the company raised its EBIT outlook to $100 million to $1.1 billion. Its prior range extended from a $1.5 billion loss to a $500 million gain. <\/p>\n Volume at Maersk increased 4.1 percent to 3.4 million 40-foot containers, while Hapag-Lloyd’s transported volumes jumped 3.5 percent to 3.5 million TEUs. <\/p>\n Story Continues <\/p>\n Asia still in the driver’s seat when it comes to determining wider container market demand, according to Clerc. <\/p>\n Maersk reported that container demand out of Asia increased 6.2 percent in the second quarter, with weekly volumes above pre-war levels. The carrier continues to expect roughly 4 percent growth in the global container market, meaning Asia-originating trades are running well ahead of overall demand. <\/p>\n Clerc put the longer-term scale of the Asia boom into a sharper perspective. <\/p>\n “Cumulative head-haul export growth from the Far East over the past three years, so since 2024, has now been around 25 percent,” the CEO said. <\/p>\n Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen echoed the same statistic on the Gemini partner’s earnings call, supplementing that with additional data noting that industrywide exports from Asia on major trade lanes were up 7 percent year over year in the first half. <\/p>\n For the second quarter, Hapag-Lloyd’s volumes out of Asia didn’t see significant jumps, with Asia-to-Europe cargo increasing 2 percent and Asia-to-Americas shipments inching up just 0.7 percent. However, the company also attributed an expansion of intra-Asia trade as a primary driver in the 17.9 percent increase in volumes for its “Africa and intraregional trades” category. <\/p>\n As more containers float through the supply chain, global logistics networks have failed to expand at the same pace, giving way to port congestion. <\/p>\n Despite the 25 percent head-haul export growth, global terminal capacity in the same period has only increased 10 percent, Clerc observed. <\/p>\n “This clearly shows the extreme challenges that some terminals are facing today. Many of them are completely full, resulting in growing congestions in some of the key nodes of our network, which is impacting the global network and not just the local situation because of their criticality,” said Clerc. “The effect of these disruptions will not be linear. When a key node like Shanghai<\/a>\u2014which today has a 12-day waiting time\u2014is affected, this will result in sharp rises in rates.” <\/p>\n According to Clerc, it takes seven to 10 years to get a greenfield terminal from ideation to operation. <\/p>\n On top of the congestion problem, the Strait of Hormuz disruption is also forcing carriers to rely on more expensive alternative routings and land bridges, tacking on substantial operational costs. <\/p>\n Hapag-Lloyd estimates the war in Iran created approximately $600 million in additional cash costs during the second quarter, while bunker prices increased sequentially from $485 per metric ton to $700. Higher storage, inland transportation, insurance and other expenses also pushed up the cost base. <\/p>\n Those costs are being passed through in part via emergency surcharges<\/a> and fuel recovery mechanisms. Hapag-Lloyd said virtually all its long-term contracts contain bunker clauses, with most adjustments taking effect July 1. <\/p>\n