European countries have launched a "second lockdown" due to the worsening pandemic outbreak, but it has not affected the "crazy" demand in the container market. Maersk Shipping, the world's largest shipping company, is optimistic that the freight rates for the first half of the year will also rise.

The worsening outbreak has led to a surge in demand from consumers who work from home, upending normal trade flows and causing the cost of shipping goods to soar.

Vincent Clerc, Maersk's chief commercial officer, bluntly said recently: "There simply aren't enough containers in the world to cope with current demand."

"Even with the new lockdown in Europe, we really don't see a significant change in demand and the current high level of demand in the container ship market will continue for at least a few more weeks."

Clerc said the current volume of cargo shipped by Maersk Line was "insane".

He said all Maersk Line ships available for shipping were at sea and all containers available for loading were in use.

Container ships have been sailing with full loads since last August -- something that has not happened in the past decade.

Clerc expects that although the freight rate has been high but did not peak, may be in the first half of this year a certain moment to reach the peak.

He said he could only predict about four to six weeks, and that ultimately it would depend on the economy and consumer sentiment. "It's hard to say whether the new lockdown will spur consumers to buy more goods on Amazon and other online channels, or whether demand will be hurt by the weak economy," he said.

The consolidation market began to rebound strongly in the second half of last year.

Prices per FEU surged by an average of 50 per cent last year and are 30 per cent higher than the average eight-year average, according to the World Container Index.

Lee Klaskow, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said last year was probably one of the industry's best years and rates would remain high in the first quarter of this year.

Clerc estimated that the historically high freight rates would ease in the first half of the year, with "the current gap between supply and demand being the largest in the US, followed by Europe" as local governments in the US and Europe were better able to mitigate the economic impact of the outbreak.