The average annual rate to charter a large car carrier reached $70,000 a day in June, according to shipbroker Clarksons, up from $42,500 at the end of last year, as vehicle exports out of China outpace the capacity of the ships built to move them.

Rates to charter the vessels, which are designed so cars can be driven on and off, are up 65 per cent this year. Specialised carriers are booked out years ahead to move vehicles from Chinese factories.

Research group Mobility Global says China exported just under 600,000 cars and vans in 2019. This year the group forecasts China could ship up to 10 million vehicles.

“You’ve got China moving from being insignificant to being the world’s largest vehicle exporter in only a five-year period,” said Andreas Enger, chief executive of Norwegian car carrier Höegh Autoliners. Enger said ocean freight rates for cars are now double their prepandemic levels.

Carriers have bought vessels in recent years to meet the demand. Lasse Kristoffersen, chief executive of Wallenius Wilhelmsen, which operates the world’s largest car-carrier fleet, said the global fleet has grown by about 40 per cent but still cannot meet China’s needs.

“The strength of the market in the shipping segment is amazing, and it is due to the unprecedented growth of exports out of China,” Kristoffersen said on an earnings call earlier this year.

Industry executives had expected charter rates to fall this year as ships ordered between 2022 and 2025 entered service. Rates peaked at $115,000 a day in late 2023 and early 2024.

The export volumes are reshaping European sales registers. Registrations in the European Union for SAIC Motor rose 19 per cent in the first half of 2026 and BYD’s more than doubled, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. Over the same period Stellantis gained 6 per cent, Volkswagen 2.6 per cent, and Renault fell 4.2 per cent.

With a handful of exceptions, Chinese cars are not exported to the United States because of tariffs and software restrictions tied to national security concerns. Battery-electric and hybrid models from brands including BYD and SAIC Motor are increasingly taking share from Western brands in countries including the UK, Brazil and Germany, as well as at home.

Tu Le, managing director of advisory firm Sino Auto Insights, said the export push amounts to a “pressure release valve” as domestic sales slow. Car sales in China fell more than 20 per cent in the first half of 2026 against the same period a year earlier, according to International Energy Agency data. Chinese carmakers face competition between more than 100 domestic brands.

“When you go to Germany, you don’t have 20 other Chinese car brands that are elbowing you to get that one sale, like you have in Shanghai,” Le said.

Some manufacturers are loading vehicles into standard shipping containers to reach Europe, Australia and Latin America. Kristoffersen said during an earnings presentation on Tuesday that up to four million vehicles are exported from China each year in containers or other alternatives to car carriers.

Eric Dessupoiu, vice president of finished vehicle logistics at France’s Ceva Logistics, said automakers prefer car carriers because driving vehicles on and off is cheaper and carries less risk of damage. Automakers with no other option will use containers, he said.

The practice is not new but was rarely done at scale before the pandemic, when demand outstripped the supply of ships. Christoph Seitz, global vice president of finished vehicles at Dubai-based freight forwarder DP World, said some Western automakers were sceptical about putting cars in boxes but Chinese manufacturers were not. “They immediately went, ‘We need more capacity,’” Seitz said.

A car shipped by container must be taken to a facility near a port, loaded into a box and lifted by crane onto a ship, with the process reversed at the destination. Seitz said container lines including Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk and Switzerland’s Mediterranean Shipping Co have begun selling directly to automakers.

Container capacity and freight costs have previously fed through to UK manufacturers, with S&P Global attributing part of an earlier decline in British export orders to shipping delays and rising rates.

Chinese carmakers are also moving into shipping. BYD launched its first dedicated car carrier in 2024 and now operates a fleet of eight vessels. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

Broken engine fragments smashed a cabin window of a Ryanair plane causing a man’s head and right shoulder to be sucked into the hole last month, US investigators have said.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) wrote in a preliminary report that this happened after an engine fan blade broke shortly after takeoff on the 10 July flight from Greece to Germany.

Serbian national Ljubisa Karović’s head and right shoulder were sucked out of the plane’s window, leaving him “seriously injured and in shock”.

His wife Svetlana Grković Maksimović later told BBC Serbia that she and two other passengers held onto his legs for several minutes.

The NTSB said the flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen “experienced a No. 2 (right) engine fan-blade-out (FBO) failure during climb out”.

“The crew elected to return to SKG [Thessaloniki International Airport] where they made an uneventful landing.”

The NTSB was “delegated the investigation in full” by the Greek authorities in the days following the incident.

It also detailed a timeline of events given by the flight crew, who said they received a “high vibration” engine alert during the climb.

In response, they reduced the engine power and carried out a series of checks. When the vibrations stopped, the crew continued to climb on autopilot, the report said.

But the engine vibrations then increased and the crew heard a loud bang, prompting them to declare an emergency and begin their descent.

Flight attendants reported hearing and feeling the vibrations, and seeing a small amount of smoke before the oxygen masks were deployed.

One flight attendant said they then noticed passengers calling for help after a passenger became “partially lodged in a damaged cabin window”, with the entire window missing.

The engine had undergone ultrasonic inspections in May this year with no findings of fault, the report stated.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary earlier suggested that the incident may have been caused by “foreign object damage” to an engine.

The aircraft was operated by Ryanair’s subsidiary Malta Air.

British footwear brand Terry de Havilland is planning a US retail launch with Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom later this year, according to Darren Spurling, who owns the business.

Spurling, 60, is the nephew of the late designer Terry de Havilland and runs the Newcastle-based company with his son Josh. The business has ten employees, designs in Britain and manufactures its shoes in Spain.

The move follows a rise in US online sales after recent sightings of actresses including Millie Bobby Brown and Margot Robbie wearing the brand’s shoes.

The label was founded by Terrence Higgins, who began designing shoes in 1972 and opened his King’s Road shop, Cobblers to the World, the same year. He took his trading name from a Paris phone book. “He didn’t think Higgins was a very good name for shoes,” Spurling said, “it didn’t seem exotic.”

The brand’s platform heels were worn in the 1970s by David Bowie and by customers Spurling listed as “Lulu, Cher, The Rolling Stones, Elton John”. Its Margaux wedge, named after Margaux Hemingway, has been in the collection since 1973, and the Deco heel, a five-inch sandal with metallic snakeskin trim, has been displayed at the V&A. The museum’s collection also includes a pair of his 1972 snakeskin platform shoes, given by the milliner David Shilling.

By the late 1990s the designer had moved away from the mainstream and was making bespoke shoes for customers in Camden Market. He returned to wider attention after Miu Miu, the label owned by Prada, produced shoes Spurling described as “literally exact copies, same materials, same designs”.

De Havilland pursued Prada through the courts over trademark infringement, arguing that his products were classed as art. The case did not progress far, but the publicity helped him secure licensing deals in America and Britain. Under Intellectual Property Office rules, a UK registered design must be renewed every five years and lasts a maximum of 25 years.

Spurling, who had previously sold his family’s chain of London sports shops to Blacks Leisure Group and served as managing director of surfwear brand O’Neill’s, reconnected with his uncle at a family party and began advising him on the licensing arrangements. “I helped him to buy out the licensing so that he could get the brand back, which we did in 2010,” he said. Spurling bought the company outright in 2015, when the designer was nearly 80. De Havilland died in 2019.

The pandemic followed. “In all honesty, we thought we were buggered,” Spurling said, given that the company specialised in occasion shoes. The business moved to a direct to consumer model and, in 2022, went “from nothing to doing over a million pounds” online. Spurling said that boom has since ended as consumers have become “more considered” and “more conscious” about what they buy.

He said he keeps the team small and outsources where possible because “the cost of hiring is an issue … the best way [is] to be adaptable”. The company has reintroduced 1970s designs and added matching bags and trainers, while remaining “very much focused on quality, on craftsmanship, on being slow fashion”.

Other British brands have moved in both directions on the US market. Wine merchant Berry Bros. & Rudd is opening its first US store in Washington, while athleisure label Tala suspended a planned £5 million US investment after a change in American tariff policy.

Spurling said the brand’s history gives it “real strong credibility”, adding: “what we need to do is make it as relevant as possible … and that’s a challenge.”

Amy Ingham

Amy Ingham is a reporter at Business Matters, covering UK business news with a focus on breaking news, business policy, late payments and insolvency. She joined the magazine in 2026 after completing the NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at Harlow College’s journalism school. Her recent reporting includes British Steel’s nationalisation and its impact on SME suppliers, the decline in late payments by large firms, and Insolvency Service director disqualifications. Reach her at aingham@cbmeg.co.uk.

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Hollywood actress and singer Selena Gomez is being sued by five investors who backed Wondermind Global, a mental health business she founded with her mother.

Shareholders are claiming the pop star failed to fulfil promises that she would be “actively building” the brand, saying her “abject dereliction of her duties” has left the company in a “state of financial calamity”.

The lawsuit seeks to recover around $1.2m (£890,000) it claims was invested as well as costs and damages.

The BBC has contacted Wondermind and Gomez’s representatives for comment.

Gomez, who rose to fame as a child actor before moving into pop music, set up the mental health platform five years ago with her mother Mandy Teefey and businesswoman Daniella Pierson. It came after Gomez publicly discussed her own mental health struggles, including with bipolar disorder.

The 34-year-old is one of the most-followed women in the world on social media, with over 500 million followers, and an estimated net worth of nearly $1bn. She also founded cosmetics company Rare Beauty, in 2020, which is closely associated with her name and image.

Wondermind aimed to make mental health-related content more accessible through a digital platform, recruiting investors to back the venture.

But the lawsuit claims Wondermind’s founders “falsely represented” their position by suggesting “a full slate” of ad deals, celebrity cover stories, an app and other initiatives were already underway and promising that Gomez would take an active role as its head of marketing.

“Gomez purported ‌to ⁠sign a contract obligating her to perform and then ignored it,” the lawsuit claims.

Gomez is currently listed as a co-founder on Wonderminds website, below her mother who is now in the chief executive role, following Pierson’s departure from the company.

The individuals behind the suit, based in New York and Florida, include Brent Saunders, chief executive of eye-health company Bausch + Lomb.

The claimants’ lawsuit alleges Wondermind failed to meet “even its most basic obligations, such as timely paying its employees and vendors”.

Promises including Wondermind’s partnerships and app never materialised, according to the claim.

“For three years, while the company quietly collapsed around them, not one of its founders, officers, or directors said a word to the investors whose money was funding the collapse,” the complaint states.

They said they were unaware of the company’s difficulties until an investigative news story by the online magazine, The Cut, surfaced in September 2025.

That report made allegations about Wondermind’s finances and issues with its management, according to the lawsuit.

The article showed that “Wondermind had no plan for its future – much less a plan for achieving a multi-billion dollar valuation,” the lawsuit claims.