When the Chinese New Year (CNY) is around the corner you can rest assure the country will celebrate it. And for businesses, CNY somehow couls mean bearish.
The holiday is all about the family and since most Chinese work far away from home it takes time to reunite with loved ones. This time of year actually is the world’s largest human migration!
Moreover, Chinese government supports their people’s union during the festive and believe it or not, it will last almost a full month of holiday.
This is pretty much the reason why before the holiday there is high pressure on all export from the country.
Most of industries will stop their production for almost a whole month. For that reason, the transport prices go up since the factories in China want to export the products before they go on leave and the importers want to fill up their stocks.
The prices won’t go down to it’s “normal self” for quite sometime after the holiday.
So as a common advice, I would recommend you to plan your import/export so that you have plenty of room for hick ups and delays.
Not only will the production in China be on hold, all carriers will make major changes in their sailing schedules in order to fill their capacity.
If you have the possibility to avoid any trade some time before, during and after the Chinese New Year that is of course a good solution, and we can discuss what is best for your shipping plan for the rest of the year.