RLL Container Report - 24 August 2016
From: John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd. Email: john.keir@telia.com Date: 24 August 2016
Container “Slot-BnB”.
During the first six months of the year, growth in inter-regional container traffic expanded far faster than the inter-continental trade. Just under 50 million teu were transported between the continents, which equates to a 2.1% rise over last year’s figures. Meanwhile, the shorter routes between the various regions recorded a highly commendable 8.6% increase in throughput to return a total of 26.4 million teu for the first half of the year.
In the first six half of 2016, RZD (Russian Railways) carried a total of 1.54 million teu, an increase of 5.6% over last year. Some 976,000 laden containers were carried during this period. At the same time, RZD transported a total of 562,200 empty teu, representing a rise of 6.7%. Of these, a very large number, 415,600 teu), were transported empty inside Russia. That figure does suggest that many of the empty units could be used to transport cargoes within Russia itself. Someone urgently needs to set up the intermodal equivalent of “Uber” or “AirBnB” to find cargo for these empty moves. Just match up the cargo flows with the empty containers moving in the right direction and you can give up your day job and spend the rest of your life relaxing on your own exotic beach in the South Pacific.
The opening of the Panama Canal has led to an influx of larger box carriers to US East Coast ports. The Port of Philadelphia welcomed a neopanamax vessel in the form of MSC Sophia Celeste with a capacity of 8,800 teu. The vessel was completed in 2014 and is equipped with plugs for 1,462 reefer units, which will come in very handy, as the ship now operates on the trade from the West Coast of South America up to the Bahamas and Philadelphia, before crossing the Atlantic to call at Rotterdam. Yang Ming also used the opportunity of opening of the upgraded Panama Canal to send its Yang Ming Unity to call at the North Carolina port of Wilmington. The vessel is the biggest box carrier to call at the expanded port facility, which can handle vessels of up to 10,000 teu. As with the rail containers, many of these large new vessels have lots of empty slots just waiting for the container equivalent of Uber or AirBnB.
Although the Port of Riga recorded a ten percent reduction in cargo throughput for the period between January and June, container traffic via through the Baltic port was up by 3.1% to 215,500 teu. In the bulk sector, coal exports were off by almost 20% but fertiliser exports at 1.71 million tons were up by a creditable eight percent. Theoretically, it would require 1,140 containers per month to transport this volume of fertiliser. With the projected arrival of Maersk’s bigger Baltic box carriers, next year the trade will have both the slot capacity and the empty units to handle this volume of bagged cargo.
John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd.
24 August 2016
Copyright ©, 2016, John Keir