Due to growing fruits business from Brazil, the north-south trades for container lines are on the mend.
The northbound East Coast South America to Europe trade »is finally« increasing, shipping consultancy Drewry says in a new market report. The main reason is the fruit export bu[ds_preview]siness from Brazil – a segment which is getting more and more important for container lines. The latest container statistics for the Europe-East Coast South America trade shows that the southbound market continues to strengthen, while the long-time downwards trend for the northbound trade has bottomed out and starting to turn the corner.
Citing figures from Datamar up to and including September, the report says that southbound container volumes from Europe »have performed very well«, registering year-on-year gains in 13 consecutive months, with seven of those months rising by at least 10%, including the last two months.
After nine months in 2017, the southbound trade was up by 12% compared to the same period last year and is on course to match the 2014 annual total after a couple of lean years. »This will be the first year since 2013 with any type of annual growth«, it is predicted.
Split by region of export, growth from the smaller Mediterranean market was strongest, rising by 17% to 181,000 TEU after nine months. North Europe exports to ECSA increased by 10% to 442,000 TEU over the same timeframe.
