According to the Container Shipping Industry Expert Lars Jensen, Container Trade Statistics (CTS) has today the demand data for the month of August, and it shows a slowdown in growth. In July the global container volume grew 3.6%, but in August this slowed to just 0.8% measured versus same month last year.
The change was clearly not uniform globally – as an example, European import volumes grew three times faster than the global average, with volumes up 2.4% year-on-year.
However South America and Oceania pulled the performance down as both continents saw declines in imports as well as exports. In Australia imports were down 5.2% and exports were down 4.5%, whereas in South America imports were down 3.7% and exports were down 5.9%.
Despite much talk of trade wars and looming recession, the North American numbers were not particularly off from the global average. Imports grew 0.4%, whereas exports were down 1.4%.
Source: Larse Jensen/LinkedIn
