Container shipping lines that are already incurring losses due to ship oversupply could suffer further from falling demand on their most important trade route, reports the Financial Times (FT).
Figures published on 11 January by Container Trades Statistics, the body that compiles data on container trades into and out of Europe, showed that traffic from Asia to Europe fell 5.33 per cent between November 2011 and the previous year to 1.04m twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), the FT said.
European container imports from all sources fell 3.75 per cent compared with November 2010.
The last set of CTS figures had shown that Asia to Europe trade volumes were still growing as recently as October, when volumes grew 3.4 per cent.
“Imports to Europe from Asia declined by 6 per cent `compared with October` – the lowest monthly volume since Chinese new year last February,” CTS wrote in its commentary on the figures.
The CTS data also showed the continuing effects of ship oversupply on prices, with its price index for imports from Asia to Europe falling 4 points to the lowest levels since 2009, during the worst year in container shipping’s history.
Rates per container on the Asia to Europe route slumped in the middle of last year as an influx of huge new ships – and the launch by Denmark’s Maersk Line of the first ever daily service of departures from key Asian ports to Europe – prompted lines to slash prices.
The FT said there have also been signs that Maersk Line and Switzerland’s Mediterranean Shipping Company have been embroiled in a battle to undercut each other’s rates. But Nils Andersen, chief executive of AP Møller-Maersk, Maersk Line’s parent, attributed the falling rates in November to panic among Maersk Line’s competitors over its new service.
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