Shipping Costs – Emergency Charges
The rise in worldwide container demand, and COVID-related issues has led to a global increase in container delays and costs. The world container index, below, shows the dramatic rise in shipping prices. Rather than implement a general price rise, in response to these rising costs, we had previously included these emergency charges as an additional surcharge, of up to $1 a case, for affected orders on your LCL invoices based on how many cases you ship.

We continue to hope that the global supply problems will be resolved later this year, however, in the meantime we are now increasing these temporary emergency charges from up to $1 a case to an estimated $1.60 a case, these are “pass through” charges. We have been able to negotiate with our freight carriers that this emergency price should not increase any further in Q2, however, ports and drayage companies continue to increase their charges. Furthermore, we believe that our agreement will mean less last minute cancellation due to equipment availability from the shipping lines. Sailings, may of course, continue to be cancelled or delayed. The change in emergency charges will be effective on all shipments arriving on or after April 1st.
Typically, when we introduce any rate increases, we give customers advance notice. In this circumstance, the emergency surcharges are already being billed to Elenteny so we are not able to postpone passing on the cost. We apologize for this inconvenience.
For FCLs, the emergency shipping charges will be included in our quotes. Previous quotes will remain valid for 30 days from the time of quotation. New quotes will be inclusive of the new rates and include the possibility of a much smaller emergency surcharge, and they will be passed through on your invoice.
We continued to recommend that our clients allow an additional 4 – 6 weeks for shipping delays.
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