How do numbers compare across sources? Here are some thoughts.<\/p>\n
The easiest number to compare is the global number of teu generated annually in world trade. Easy right? Not really. There is no single source nor is there a standard way of counting as yet. Global Insight, for example, only counts fully laden deepsea container traffic, but that also suffers from some uncertainties. Not included are intra- European container moves, made up of a mix of deepsea transhipment and intra-European Union cargo. A recent study concluded that this is estimated to be somewhere in the region of 6m full teu in 2005. Of this, approximately 60% is deepsea transhipment.<\/p>\n
The other unknown factor is the estimation of the tonnes moving in containers.Not an easy matter.We have 20ft,40ft,40ft high cube,and 45ft boxes in circulation. The challenge that faces us is to work out how many tonnes go in each, by commodity and trade route. With some 100m laden teu moving, 0.1 tonnes makes 900,000 to 1m teu difference. So who is to say one number is right or another is wrong? Counting containers is not a science but an art; the truth is in the eye of the beholder.<\/p>\n
Consistency matters. Global Insight’s forecast in July of 2006 was 98m. Add to this the additional 6m European moves that other sources count and in fact, surprisingly there is not that major a discrepancy in the market. Clarkson’s suggest 116m in 2006, Maersk 106mrestaurant scuttlebug.<\/p>\n
Given the rush in new orders generating over 500,000 teu of capacity in June and July, the higher the number, the better if the supply\/demand balance is not to be disturbed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We are really creatures of habit. Take numbers for instance.We have a blind urge to compare one number with the next. For example, how does that compare with what the competition is saying, or what they said last time, or what are we saying or better still, what was that number that I overheard at the restaurant? \u00a0<\/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":[52],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-economist"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}