Long Beach: A panel of analysts at this year’s TPM conference organised by the Journal of Commerce in California outlined huge changes to Asia’s sourcing patterns, with the likes of Indonesia, Vietnam and crucially Mexico beginning to claw away export dominance from China.
Mexico is taking some of the market share for exports to the US from China, said Hong Kong-based Johnson Leung from Jefferies.
He noted how China container port throughput is dropping, and Leung said 2008 was the peak for containerisation. The Jefferies analyst predicted 5-6% volume growth year-on-year on the transpacific, down from the pre-Lehman standard of 9%.
“This year I am not seeing that there will be an inventory restocking,” Leung warned.
“Freight rates have a bit more downside risk,” he added.
There is a noticeable manufacturing shift from China to Vietnam and Indonesia, according to JOC economist Mario Moreno. US imports from Asia will grow 2% to 12.8m teu, Moreno predicted.
Alphaliner, meanwhile, expects an additional 1.69m teu in capacity to come into the market during 2013. Five carriers alone are taking more than 100,000 teu each in newbuilds during this year.
"Supply and demand situation unlikely to improve until 2015," Alphaliner’s Singapore consultant Tan Hua Joo said.
“Shipper sympathy for carriers has largely disappeared,” he said, while also suggesting that serious carrier consolidation is unlikely; the Hamburg Sud/Hapag Lloyd marriage was something he deemed as a “less than 50%” chance. [05/03/13]
