Latest / Container Bytes: Weekly Ocean & Air Freight Intelligence for Supply Chain Pros
Episode #14: Pasta Wars, Rate Spikes & The Lunar New Year Rush
Welcome to 2026! We are already 3% of the way through the year, so if you haven't hit your KPIs yet, you're officially behind. JK, kinda.
Ocean freight is starting the year with a hangover and a double shot of espresso. Rates are climbing fast, with Asia-Med is up 20% to $4,800 and Transpacific rates jumped 22% just to kick off January. It’s the classic pre-Lunar New Year rush, fueled by the Red Sea crisis that just refuses to quit. It’s basically chaos, but organized chaos.
And in the weirdest news of the week, we narrowly avoided a geopolitical crisis over... lasagna. The US quietly walked…
The skinny
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