Roughly 3m TEU of containership capacity — a fleet larger than all but four global carriers — is currently absorbed by delays across Asian waters, and Sea-Intelligence calculates that unwinding the congestion could take as long as 10 months.

The Danish analyst puts the immobilised share of the global fleet at 8.5%. Applying recovery rates observed after the pandemic and the initial Red Sea crisis, it estimates a return to the low congestion levels of June 2025 would take seven to 10 months. Even a retreat to conditions prevailing at the end of last year would need six to eight months.

That timeline matters for shippers and forwarders calendar planning. Chinese New Year falls on February 6, 2027, and on current trajectories Asian congestion will likely be only partially resolved before the pre-holiday cargo rush begins. What started as a typhoon-driven disruption is now behaving like a structural supply-chain constraint that could persist well into 2027.

Intra-Asia rates hit record territory

The bottlenecks are already visible in pricing. Drewry's Intra-Asia Container Index has climbed into record territory, with individual trades setting historic highs. The latest assessment shows Shanghai–Laem Chabang jumping 22% to $1,609 per 40-ft box, while Shanghai–Jakarta rose 12% to $2,300 as Golden Week demand collided with restricted effective capacity.

Repeated typhoons sit at the heart of the problem. Freightos notes that congestion at Far East origins has been compounded as delays cascade into transhipment hubs, and carriers skipping badly affected ports simply shift the pressure elsewhere in the network. Its mid-September assessment warned backlogs could remain a factor beyond Golden Week and well into October.

Deployment figures flatter the market

Scheduled capacity data also shows the distortion. Sea-Intelligence calculated Asia–North Europe deployment around Golden Week at 1.5m TEU over four weeks — 27% higher year on year and 60% above pre-pandemic averages. Those figures are partly inflated by vessel bunching caused by congestion rather than deliberate capacity additions by carriers.

HSBC similarly expects congestion to prolong effective capacity constraints through Golden Week, even as delays begin migrating downstream towards Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

On the headhaul eastbound trades, the pressure remains intense. Xeneta's platform shows Asia–US rates still near pandemic-era records, and its top analyst, Peter Sand, said shippers entering 2027 tenders cannot fully dismiss current disruptions as something that will disappear quickly. For BCOs and forwarders locked into annual contract negotiations, that reframes the disruption from a spot-market blip into a structuring assumption.

Charter market confirms the squeeze

The charter market tells the same story from the supply side. Braemar's BOXi index has reached a 52-week high of 315.59, with the broker describing an "extremely tight supply situation" and virtually no available post-panamax or panamax tonnage.

The irony is that the record orderbook currently masks itself: ships ordered to expand capacity are sitting at anchor outside congested ports rather than carrying boxes. For carriers, congestion is quietly supporting rate levels across intra-Asia and headhaul trades; for shippers, it means elevated costs and unreliable schedules with no near-term relief valve from newbuild deliveries.

Unless typhoon activity subsides and port productivity recovers faster than the post-Red Sea precedent suggests, intra-Asia rate records and charter-market tightness look set to define the market through the Lunar New Year tendering season.