Sea freight is at least 5x cheaper than air freight for the same cargo. What are the main reasons for this price difference?
Sea freight is at least 5x cheaper than air freight for the same cargo. What are the main reasons for this price difference?
Sea freight is dramatically cheaper for several structural reasons:
1. Capacity and scale: A large container vessel carries 20,000+ TEUs in a single voyage. A cargo aircraft carries roughly 100 tonnes. The per-unit cost of moving cargo drops sharply at ship scale.
2. Fuel economics: Ships are highly fuel-efficient per tonne-kilometre. A container ship achieves roughly 500 tonne-km per litre of fuel versus around 0.5 tonne-km for aircraft.
3. Infrastructure: Ports are built for high-volume, slow-cycle operations. Airports handle fast-turnaround but require intensive ground handling, security screening, and slot management — all of which add cost.
4. Speed penalty: Aircraft maintenance, depreciation, and crew costs are spread over far fewer annual flights than a ship's annual voyages.
In practice, air freight runs $3–8/kg vs sea LCL at $20–40/CBM (which typically equates to $0.02–0.04/kg for dense cargo). For a 500 kg, 1 CBM shipment from China to Europe, air might cost $2,000–4,000 vs sea LCL at $60–120. The 20–30x price difference is real for dense cargo.