Container shipping market to be mastered?
The market for container shipping began to recover this year. At least, the largest world's container ports capacity statistics for the first two months look promising. At the same time, Baltic ports started to claim actively to become a container hub station.Winter growth
The first signs of a market recovery appeared in December 2009. A trend the experts and market participants still feared to call a sustainable growth, seems to consolidate its position. Thus, the Singapore port container turnover according to preliminary data increased by 18% compared with the same period of 2009 in January-February 2010 - up to 4 million 515.5 thousand TEUs. In February, the port container capacity grew by 17.9% compared with February 2009 and fell by 6.4% compared with January 2010 - up to 2 million 183.2 thousand TEUs.
Container capacity in the ports in China grew by 28.4% - up to 20 million 964 thousand TEUs, including sea ports by 26.5% - up to 18 million 867 thousand TEUs, river ports at 49.4% - up to 2 million 973 thousand TEUs.
Container turnover in ports of Latvia in January-February 2010 also grew up by 8.3% as of the same period in 2009 - 93 to 32 thousand TEUs.
Container capacity in the port of Long Beach (USA) in January-February 2010 increased by 17.4% compared with the same period last year - to 841.939 thousand TEUs. In February 2010 the port container capacity made up 413 thousand TEUs, that is 3,7% lower than the turnover of January 2010
The volume of containers throughput of another major U.S. ports - Los Angeles in January-February 2010 increased by 9.74% compared to the same period of 2009 - up to 1 million 98 thousand 427.75 TEUs. In February the volume of transshipment of containers made up 525.458 thousand TEUs, which is 26.95% more than in February 2009
Big Port Saint-Petersburg has not remained aloof from the general trend. Containers turnover for the same period grew by 32% compared with the same period of 2009 - to 235.2 thousand TEUs. In February the number of handled containers increased by 9.4% as of January 2010
On the one hand, such stable growth in transshipment of containers can be explained by replenishment of inventory after the holidays and the crisis period of last year it was minimal, which is indirectly confirmed by the decrease in the number of handled containers in the largest ports in February compared with January. Nevertheless, the fact of such replenishment itself indicates the stabilization of market, which will most likely continue to grow, although not so rapidly.
Positive forecast is provided by gradual recovery of the freight cost index Baltic Dry - from the beginning of 2010 it grew by 287 points, although so far it is at a fairly low level. And although the index reflects the cost of freight of raw materials, it indicates the growth of industry (especially the demand for raw materials is provided by industry in China), which, in its turn, leads to future increases of container flow.
This is confirmed by the impressive growth of the composite index value of the container cargo freight in China, which for the last 3 months increased by 34.7%. The index value of the container cargo freight in China reflects the dynamics of freight prices for the export container shipments from China in 11 directions of 16 major international shipping companies.
However, there are problems. For example, a situation exacerbated by piracy. According to Marine Coordinator of the International Federation of Transport Workers, Steve Cotton, governments take no zero measures to solve this problem.