The slowdown in growth in the world\u2019s leading low cost manufacturing centre is having consequences not just in the container shipping world but also now in the terminal sector.<\/p>\n
Data just published by China\u2019s General Administration of Customs shows that exports fell in April by 1.8% year-on-year in US dollar terms. This exceeded an earlier official estimate of a 0.1% drop, and came after an 11.5% surge in March thus curtailing hopes of a sustained recovery.<\/p>\n
Imports into China in April slid 10.9% from the same month last year, more than double the consensus forecast for a 5% drop and deepening the previous month\u2019s 7.6% decline.<\/p>\n
China\u2019s descent into the doldrums has been severely impacting the container shipping industry for some time now. Reduced demand for container shipping capacity combined with the ongoing delivery of new containerships has had the inevitable downward impact on freight rates and the associated earning power of shipping lines. Indeed, the decision by certain companies to dispose of their container shipping businesses and by a large number of others to form mega consortia is a symptom of this<\/p>\n
It is also now becoming increasingly clear that the port and terminal sector \u2013 in many cases also beset by regional economic problems such as in the case of Russia or Europe as a whole \u2013 is also now feeling the cold wind of leaner times. Cost cutting has also come to the port and terminal sector as made clear recently by APM Terminals drastically reducing the size of its business development division.<\/p>\n
Generally, the writing is on the wall that investment in new terminal opportunities will proceed but at a significantly lower level. There will be a much more selective approach.<\/p>\n
Consolidation is set to be the order of the day in the terminal business for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
COMMENT: They used to say when \u2018America sneezes the world catches a cold\u2019 but maybe nowadays this is a maxim that applies to China not the US, writes Mike Mundy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-4536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-strategist"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4536"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/coastlink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=4536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}