Alphaliner estimates that total throughput by volume at the world\u2019s Top 30 container ports grew by only 0.2% in the first half of the year. Specifically, it notes that 12 of the Top 30 ports reported lower traffic, including six of the Top 10.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Alphaliner also notes at a regional level the decline of African trade volumes which had fallen by 11.5% by the end of June.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Highlighted in Alphaliner\u2019s \u2018drop list\u2019 are volumes at Egypt\u2019s Port Said East Terminal, which fell by nearly 21%, and at another major transhipment port, Morocco\u2019s Tanger Med hub port, which experienced an 11.5% fall in volume in the first six months of this year compared with the same period last year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
First-half growth at Chinese ports, including Hong Kong was, according to Alphaliner, just 1.4%.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This situation coupled with modest growth on the world\u2019s busiest trade lanes leads Alphaliner to its forecast of just 0.3% growth in global container traffic this year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
However, another report from Clarksons Research is more optimistic, albeit cautiously.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Clarksons states: \u201cContainer trade growth appears to have improved in 2016 so far, having slowed to an estimated rate of just 2.2% in 2015 \u2013 the slowest pace of growth since 2009.\u201d Clarksons notes that while global economic risks clearly remain, \u201ctotal container volumes are estimated to reach 182m teu in full year 2016, representing a 3.8% growth.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It further states: \u201cBy the end of 2016, the containership fleet is expected to total 20.2m teu representing growth of just 2.4% year-on-year, which,\u201d Clarksons says, \u201cwould be the slowest pace on record, following a rate of 8.1% in 2015.\u201d This, it concludes, would be a reversal of last year\u2019s trend and may see trade growth this year outpace expansion in the containership fleet.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Clarksons also expects mainline trades to grow 3.2% this year, to 53.1m teu, up from just 0.6% growth in 2015. It expects the Asia-Europe trade to grow by nearly 4% over the full year.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
On the non-mainline trades, Clarksons forecasts volume growth of 4% to 128.6m teu, and identifies the east-west trade, particularly between Asia and the Indian sub-continent, as likely to be among the fastest growing.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
North-south downbeat<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n However, the analyst is not so positive on the north-south trades. It points to the collapse in commodity prices that hit import levels last year, a trend expected to continue throughout 2016.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n A figure of 4% growth is also put on intra-regional container traffic growth in Asia. \u201cWhile China appears to be continuing its transition towards a more diverse economy away from a focus on heavy industry, prospects for intra-Asian container trade remain positive,\u201d Clarksons states. \u201cDeveloping Asian economies continue to hold growth potential, and the multi-location assembly of manufactured goods is expected to continue, particularly with developments in wage differentials across the region.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Giving a third opinion, BIMCO pits 2016 container demand growth of 3.5%-4%. It bases this on overall container volumes that have grown by an average GDP-to-trade multiplier of just 1:1 since 2010 and the expectation that this will continue in future years. It says: \u201cWith IMF expecting GDP growth of 3.4% in 2016, this translates into container demand of 3.5%-4%. The \u2018new normal\u2019 level of demand is somewhat lower than originally expected \u2013 just as global GDP growth keeps disappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n From 2000-2008, the GDP-to-trade multiplier stood at 2.2 delivering container demand growth at 8%-9% from a GDP base of 4% on average.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" COMMENT: Industry analyst Alphaliner has come up with the stunning statistic that global container traffic will grow by just 0.3% this year, the second slowest growth rate since 2009 when volume shrank by -8.3% following the global financial crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":10102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-10101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post-script"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10103,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101\/revisions\/10103"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10101"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=10101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}