Spot Market Trends in Spain: What to Expect as 2024 Comes to a Close
Week - 50 - The Spanish transport market emerges from eighteen months of depression
Spain is experiencing robust economic growth, with an expected GDP increase of 3.4% for 2024. This figure significantly surpasses the Eurozone's projected growth of 0.9% and outpaces other major EU economies. But does this economic boom translate to the spot market prices? In this post, we will delve into the current market situation and outline expectations for the coming weeks.
The graph below illustrates the evolution of spot prices, spot offers, and inverted contract rejection rates for domestic road transportation in Spain over the past two years. For a detailed explanation of these figures, please refer to previous Market Monday articles featuring these KPIs.
Spain domestic road transportation
Source: Transporeon Market Insights, own evaluation and illustration
The highlighted sections in the chart enable easy year-on-year comparison by marking corresponding weeks. The data shows notable differences when compared to 2023. Rejections have sharply decreased, which is the main indicator of this trend and points to tight capacity in the market. The reduced number of spot market offers reinforces this assessment. Consequently, prices are trending upwards - a natural reaction to the constrained capacity. This movement across all KPIs align with the typical patterns as we near the busy pre-Christmas rush.
What stands out is that spot rates in 2023 showed a notably lower response. We likely have not yet seen the peak of spot rates, which may be reached either this week or next. Given the challenging capacity supply, further spot rate increases exceeding 10% before Christmas would not be surprising.
With Spain's thriving economy and limited capacity, spot rates in 2025 are likely to surpass 2024 levels, assuming no major global disruption.
Stay tuned for the Spain edition of "Understanding Road Transportation," scheduled for release on December 23rd.
Christian Dolderer
Lead Research Analyst
Transporeon