Drewry WCI Continues Slide (29 Jan 2026: Third Straight Weekly Drop)
Drewry’s World Container Index fell 5% to $2,107 per 40ft on 29 Jan 2026, extending the downtrend to a third week. The tone signal is not just lower spot prints. It is carriers leaning harder on capacity levers like blank sailings, while shippers and forwarders push for faster rate resets on the big east-west lanes.
| Signal piece | Moving | Fast impact path | Operator-facing tell |
|---|---|---|---|
| Index print | World Container Index down 5% to $2,107 per 40ft, third consecutive weekly decline. | Softer pricing tone pushes faster contract renegotiation pressure and more defensive capacity management. | Shippers ask for quicker alignments to spot and shorter validity on offers. |
| Transpacific softens | Shanghai to New York down 7% to $2,969. Shanghai to Los Angeles down 4% to $2,442. | Transpacific weakness tends to show up as more blank sailings, more pricing dispersion, and harder enforcement of GRI style moves. | More last-minute rolling, split bookings, and refusals to hold high FAK levels. |
| Asia to Europe slides | Shanghai to Rotterdam down 5% to $2,379. Shanghai to Genoa down 6% to $3,293. | Weakness on the mainline corridors becomes a cue for carriers to throttle capacity and for forwarders to shop aggressively. | More service-level tradeoffs offered, faster quote refreshes, more spot tender activity. |
| Capacity lever | Carriers announced 63 blank sailings in February, up from 27 in January, with demand described as weak ahead of Chinese New Year factory closure. | Blanking is a rate-defense tool. It also creates schedule churn and pushes reliability pain into supply chains. | More skipped calls, revised ETAs, and a higher chance of missed connection windows. |
| Routing posture diverges | Carriers are taking different approaches around Suez exposure and network risk, implying capacity returns gradually rather than all at once. | Uneven deployment creates uneven transit times. That increases lane-level pricing dispersion and planning friction. | Same origin-destination pair starts quoting with wider variance and more conditional routings. |
Comprehensive Overview
The Quick Read
This print is a tone setter. Rates are easing across the headline lanes while carriers pull the only fast lever they control, capacity. The practical result is more negotiation pressure plus more schedule churn at the same time.
Lane snapshot (US dollars per 40ft, 29 Jan 2026)
Bars are scaled within this box using the highest lane value shown as 100%.
Where the friction shows up first
- Blank sailings rise and schedules get rewritten more often, which shows up as roll risk and missed windows.
- Offer validity gets shorter, especially when shippers sense momentum and push for rapid repricing.
- Same lane can start printing a wider spread because carriers protect different strings and risk postures.
What to watch next week
- Does blanking keep rising, or does capacity come back faster than demand can absorb.
- Do Transpacific declines spill into contract behavior, with more index-linked resets and tender pressure.
- Do Asia to Europe services show sharper dispersion tied to routing risk and network changes.
If the spot market keeps drifting, the pressure typically moves from spot to near-term contract discussions quickly.
Change in blanks
+36
February minus January.
Percent change
+133%
Simple magnitude check.
Weekly feel
About 9 more per week
Rough monthly spread.
This is a fast lens only. The impact depends on where blanks hit and whether loaders can shift to alternative strings.
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