• The Port Authority of Valencia and the Fundación Valenciaport reinforce the VCFI with the breakdown of two new sub-indexes
• The Western Mediterranean index rose by 1.18% in March, coinciding with the increase in traffic to Algeria and Tunisia.
• The Far East index rises by 1.20%.

Valencia, 15 April 2019.- The Valencia Containerised Freight Index (VCFI), the index developed by the Valencia Port Authority and the Fundación Valenciaport, to record the price of export freight from Valencia to other destinations around the world, has been consolidated in the market. As an example of this, this month two new additional sub-indices have been incorporated which will measure the evolution of freight with two key geographical areas for foreign trade channelled through Valenciaport: the “VCFI Western Mediterranean” and the “VCFI Far East”.

The two new sub-indices – as is the case with the VCFI – were launched in January 2018, making it possible to detect market monitoring in two very different economic areas of the world: the Mediterranean and the Asian basin. In both cases, areas of commercial interest for Spanish exporters and importers, and very sensitive to sectorial information that can affect the evolution of prices.

Since the appearance of the VCFI, shipping companies, importers, exporters, freight forwarders and agents related to international transport have been able to document the disparate behaviour of exports and imports throughout 2018: a very dynamic first half of the year in both trade flows, and a second half with a clear slowdown in exports and sustained growth rates in imports. But this dynamism has been different, depending on the areas of the world that we adopt as a reference, an aspect that has marked the opportunity to generate two sub-indices for export freight from the port of Valencia.

The work for the preparation of the VCFI has allowed us to observe a strong growth in the flows and freight rates to North America to the point that the United States has become our main destination for exports (ceramics), and a fall in exports (not imports) to the Far East (fall in marble, for example), which has been reflected in the freight rates.

The same could be said of traffic and freight to the Middle East, the Baltic countries and Atlantic Europe.

In Mediterranean Europe, from January 2018 to date, freight rates have remained more stable despite the decline in traffic with some important countries (Morocco).

A stable behaviour of flows and freight has also been detected with West Africa, East Coast Africa, Central America and Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific Latin America and Eastern Mediterranean.

Following these conclusions of the analysis of the VCFI index in its first year of life, and due to the effects of transparency for a better knowledge of the market behaviour, a VCFI Western Mediterranean and a VCFI Far East have been chosen, with maximum guarantees in the confidentiality of the origin of the data; which will allow the users to go deeper into the cyclicality of the series and the spatial specialisation.

Both the new sub-indexes and the general VCFI will be published on the website of the Port Authority of Valencia (www.valenciaport.com) on the first Friday of each month. All of them are accessible from the Valenciaport home page.

The data, evolution and comments of the aforementioned sub-indexes are as follows:

VCFI Western Mediterranean

During the month of March, export rates from Valenciaport to the Western Mediterranean experienced an increase of 1.18% over the previous month, bringing the sub-index to a value of 960.38 points. This rise coincides with the increase in traffic to Algeria in February and, to a lesser extent, to Tunisia. In February, the Algerian government approved a new package of tariff measures that will replace the import restrictions imposed in 2018 on nearly 900 products, setting tariffs between 30% and 200% – depending on the type of product.

VCFI Far East

In the case of the Far East, freight rates in March rose by 1.20 per cent, similar to those of the Western Mediterranean. With this figure, the sub-index registers a value of 835.62 points, accumulating since January 2018 a decrease of 16.4%. In terms of traffic, the month of February also saw an increase in shipments from Valenciaport to the Far East and growth in January in hinterland exports to China after the fall experienced in 2018.

More information about the panelists

The VCFI is a quantitative index that allows to measure and buy in an objective way the data related to the sea freight from the port of Valencia. This index has been created from information obtained from primary data sources, made up of twelve top-level panelists operating in the port of Valencia, including freight forwarders and shipping companies. Specifically, the companies participating in the project are Alonso Pricing, Arkas, Cosco Shipping, Cotunay, DAL Grimaldi, Raminatrans Group, K Line, MSC, Savino del Bene, TIBA and White Line Shipping.