Opening the box

The first thought that springs to mind is whether such a publication relevant now? After all, we have heard of many cancelled and suspended major containerport expansion schemes over the last 18 months to two years.

But closer examination of this new Dynamar product does provide good justification for its release, not the least of which is its calculation of forward demand up to 2020, looked at against a detailed review of available capacity and planned major expansion projects. Fundamentally, it is a useful planning aid for port authorities, terminal operators or shipping lines who are attempting to understand what is going to happen in the future.

The report divides Europe into four main regions – Baltic/Scandinavia, UK/Eire, North West Europe and South West Europe (basically Portugal) – and it looks at each of these in conjunction with historical throughput, from 2000 onwards, as well as the future scenario to 2020. These four regions are identified by Dynamar as the main regions that are the subject of calls by container services linking them with the Far East and North America. Details of the 29 individual services operating from/to the Far East and their respective ports of call are presented and so too are those of the 16 individual services engaged in Trans-Atlantic trade. Additionally, the report considers the full container volumes associated with the main trades and provides an insight into transhipment activity and inland intermodal split.

Interestingly, the report notes that there are substantial differences in recovery across the various trade lanes. Currently, an uplift in European containerised export volume growth is noted as a general trend, fired by the weak Euro, although import trades and particularly those linked to Asia remain the most important. On the issue of sustainable recovery the report states that there is still an element of uncertainty in play. “The fact is,” states the report, “that at this moment (end May/early June) that the average development of consumer behaviour in the West still largely contradicts the rationale of the current growth of container trades.” Against this background, it further notes that the traditional methods of container traffic forecasting, typically involving GDP linked estimates, are not so relevant and as a result new, updated methods have been applied.

Overall container annual container throughput is expected to rise from 48.1m teu in 2011 to 78.1m teu in 2020 with an average of 6% growth per year expected from 2011 to 2015 falling to 5% per year in the remaining years up to and including 2020.The Baltic and Scandinavian region out of the four European zones is the one expected to register the highest growth, some 76% rising from 1.256m teu in 2010 to 2.915m teu in 2020. The three remaining regions are, however, not far behind in percentage growth terms, all registering increases of over 70% over the period.

Complementing the forecast traffic growth is forecast containerport capacity which is estimated to grow by 72% from 74m teu in 2010 to 128m teu by 2020.

The report Container Throughput & Terminal Capacity is available at www.dynamar.com.