Platts to launch two South America-US container box rates, PBX assessments

S&P Global Platts will begin publishing four new daily spot container freight rate and bunker excluded container rate assessments from May 15, 2023, complementing existing box rate assessments, and extending market coverage to an active and growing US-South America trade lane.

The new assessments will cover the following routes and will be published under these codes:

These daily spot assessments will reflect the transactable value at 13:30 Houston time, for transporting forty-foot equivalent, or FEU, containers on those fronthaul and backhaul routes, for loading five to 25 days forward from the date of publication.

The PBX assessments will reflect the latter, excluding the cost of bunker fuel. They will be calculated by subtracting the value of the existing Platts Bunker Charge assessments Platts publishes on these routes from the respective proposed container box rate assessments.

The assessments will be published in $/FEU and will follow the Houston publishing schedule.

Platts assesses key shipping regions under broad geographic descriptions.

The relevant descriptions for the routes are:

East Coast South America: Atlantic Coast including Argentina

US Gulf Coast: Houston, Texas, to Mobile, Alabama

These assessments will be published in Platts Dry Freight Wire; on Platts Shipping Alert pages SHP0510, SHP0512, SHP0520, SHP0511, SHP0521, PGB3960, PGB3961, PGT4000, PGT4004, PGT4001, and in the Platts pricing database under the symbol codes above.

Please send all feedback, comments or questions to shipping@spglobal.com, containers@spglobal.com, and pricegroup@spglobal.com. For written comments, please provide a clear indication if comments are not intended for publication by Platts for public viewing. Platts will consider all comments received and will make comments not marked as confidential available upon request.