Container Volume Up 2% at SC Ports
Today South Carolina Ports Authority reported nearly two percent growth of twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) volume since its fiscal year began in July. SCPA handled 169,477 TEUs in October, an increase from 164,734 TEUs moved during the same month last year. Fiscal year to date, SCPA's container volume reached 689,753 TEUs, a year-over-year increase of 1.73 percent. As measured in pier containers, or total boxes moved across SCPA's docks, fiscal year-to-date volume is up by 6,227 containers. SCPA handled 95,608 pier containers in October, bringing total volume to 388,883 boxes since the fiscal year began. "Our incremental container volume increase in October is reflective of a worldwide slowing in container trade…
Which way to Munich?
Drewry Supply Chain Advisors’ whitepaper finds that the traditional gateway ports in North-West Europe no longer hold all of the trump cards. A recently published whitepaper from Drewry’s Supply Chain Advisors looking at the ‘Best Routes’ for containerised imports into South Germany from China found that for some shippers using Mediterranean gateway ports is a viable alternative to the traditional North-West Europe gateways. To establish shippers’ best-route Drewry examined a variety of routes to find the best mix of cost, transit time and the number of service options. Firstly, the whitepaper looked at the number of maritime services from Shanghai to South Germany’s so-called Northern and Southern gates that were available to the market as of March 2016 (see Table).
Container Business Faces Test of Resolve
London - Drewry’s latest quarterly Container Forecaster report highlights that, while carriers have successfully implemented a series of GRIs recently which will improve their battered financial position, there are still a number of threats which could derail this and that healthy industry profitability is by no means guaranteed. The perception might be that the industry has turned a corner and the extremely low freight rates seen on the Asia-North Europe trade at the end of last year are now behind us. We concur with this general view to an extent, and we forecast that east-west freight rates, including fuel, will rise by as much 13.7 percent this year.
