Lower cargo volume growth to and from emerging markets should be expected this year compared to 2017, according to Agility Global Integrated Logistics CEO and president, Essa Al-Saleh.
He noted that volume growth had picked up substantially in 2017 – in line with the turnaround in global trade and driven by restocking – but unless another unexpected increase in demand arose, this effect would not persist into this year.
“The consensus among sea freight analysts seems to be that 2018 growth in containerised trade volumes will fall somewhere in between the low growth performance of 2016 and the very strong year of 2017, with 3-4% a reasonable central estimate,” said Al-Saleh.
Additionally, he observed that air freight on the EU-South Africa trade lane was predicted to grow by 3.8%.
