Stats point to 11% annual growth for SA imports and exports

WHILE THE flood of superships on global trades has trimmed margins for shipping lines (FTW September 14, 2007), the SA market is going through the same big-ship phase, although the finite capacity numbers are much smaller. “Excess capacity has been cascading into SA,” said Iain McIntosh, marketing manager of Mitsui OSK Line. “It’s not necessarily new-builds, although there are a lot of bigger ships appearing on the scene.” But, as on the major trades, a lot of this is absorbed in coping with market growth. McIntosh forecast that both SA’s imports and exports of full containers would increase by about 11% for this year, expecting SA ports to handle in excess of 1.2-million teus in imports this year compared to 1.1-m last year. Exports are likely to total about 850 000-teus compared to 770 000 in 2006. This he worked out from an extrapolation of figures from the Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) for the full containers handled in the first seven months of the year compared to the same period last year (See accompanying graph). And he felt this might be a conservative estimate, because the last five months of the year see a lot more business because of the pre-Xmas trade boom. And the engine for this growth, McIntosh added, is Asia – particularly China. This is also one of the areas where increased ship capacity has been most noticeable. He rated it as having increased from about 280 000-teus in annual capacity in 2003 to somewhere in the 600-to- 650 000-teu range now. It might be fullyjustified on the westbound run, but it’s still a severely imbalanced trade, with the eastbound leg short of export tonnage from SA. However, McIntosh said, things had improved. “There has been a good growth in eastbound reefer (refrigerated) container trade,” he added. “It has not been dramatic, but it is doing well.” He also noted a switch of previously bulk cargoes into containers – particularly for bulk metals. “Container prices are attractive eastbound, and SA exporters are improving their lists of containerised exports.”