‘Non-existent’ peak season a sign of financial crisis

The tide of containers on SA’s three main sea trades is on the ebb, according to executives of two of the major shipping lines serving the Far East, European and US routes. David Williams, MD of Maersk Line in SA, suggested a look at the container statistics for the SA port system in August and September – which show that the overall volumes were down -7% and -2% respectively, he told FTW. And it’s the import market which is suffering more, with exports until September showing strong growth of about 25% for all the ports. “If you take the full year up to end-September,” Williams said, “imports were only up 4% over the same period last year, while exports showed a volume growth of 24%.” Safmarine’s SA trades executive, Alex de Bruyn, agreed. “Our understanding of the overall market performance,” he told FTW, “is that for the months of August and September, import volumes were flat (compared to last year’s actuals).” And, although it’s usually SA’s peak period for trade with the Far East, that’s not the case this year. “There’s just been no peak season up to now,” said Williams, “so we’re well off last year’s figures – although there should be a slight increase in October and November.” De Bruyn recently told FTW: “Compared to last year, the 2008 peak has been slow to take off – with volumes only beginning to increase around September, compared to July last year. “Overall, Chinese exports were down during July/August – a phenomenon which is being referred to as the ‘Olympic Dip’.” There’s a similar slackness on the US and European trades. “Apart from the traditional pre-Christmas import increase ex Asia,” De Bruyn said, “we don’t have a noticeable peak season on any of our other inbound routes – and therefor don’t see a marked change.” On the export side of things, he also noted that reefer (refrigerated container) peak season volumes on the SA-Europe Container Service (Saecs) trade had dropped off. “The recently announced change to the Saecs schedule – the reduction in capacity on the second string – accommodates this,” he said. De Bruyn also noted that there was a levelling-off in one section of SA exports to the Far East. “Dry exports volumes have increased over the past few months and it is likely they will now stabilise due to the uncertainty in the commodity market,” he said. This turning of the tide is an inevitable happening in the present time frame, according to Williams, with the global financial crisis having a serious negative impact on world trade. And, like most other business executives FTW has spoken to, Williams was reluctant to make any prediction on how long this crisis would remain as a thorn in the side of global trade.