Air cargo expansion in July was the slowest for the year so far, as it failed to top June’s performance as it usually did, the volume in July growing by only 0.7%, according to WorldACD.
Revenue figures in July were also the worst reported as yet for 2015, while yields dropped again by 1.8% compared to the previous month.
The origin Africa again grew the most (6.2% in volume) thanks to increased business to the Middle East and South Asia (MESA) and within Africa. Europe again followed, with a 2.7% volume increase, mainly fueled by growth to destinations in Asia-Pacific other than China. Latin America remained in the doldrums.
For both the trans-Atlantic and the trans-Pacific markets, yields held up better for shipments from North America than for those going to North America. Unlike other sources, WorldACD did not see westbound yields improve in July over June, instead recording a drop of 3.2%, worse than the decrease in the worldwide average.
The report also examined the impact of China’s woes on global airfreight and hinted that while its economic slowdown hurt its export activity, it did not affect volume growth for shipments coming out from some of the other regions, particularly the west. It noted that the origins China & Hong Kong (CN/HK) combined were outperformed year-over-year by the rest of the world (RoW) for six of the last nine months. The airfreight research provider said that for the last 12 months, origins CN/HK grew 3.1% compared to RoW’s 4.5% growth.
Just 12 months before that, ex-CN/HK had booked growth of 7.9% against RoW’s 5.5%. For the last nine months, CN/HK outbound rose just 1.8% versus RoW 3.8%.
Looking at the compound growth over the past three years in outbound volumes, the Pearl River delta (China South East +37% and HK +4%) did much better than the Shanghai area (flat) and the Northeast: the latter actually experienced a decline over the full period.
“The west was not at all affected by the country’s recent slump: it recorded a compound growth of 81%, albeit from a modest base. Yet, its contribution to China’s outbound total grew from a modest 6% to 10% in three years,” said the report.
In terms of destinations served from China, North America kept growing in 2015 and Europe kept dwindling, trends WorldACD already noted for 2012. MESA, and in particular South Asia, showed continuing growth ex-China.
Lastly, the year-over-year figures for destination China over the past nine months indicated that CN/HK inbound volumes went up 3.5% to keep pace with the worldwide volume growth of 3.4%. But the report noted large regional differences. Volumes to CN/HK from Africa, Europe and MESA all went down, by 22%, 3% and 9.4% respectively. The Americas profited by bringing their volumes up by 17.5%. Volumes from Asia-Pacific to CN/HK increased by 7.9%, recording the strongest growth in absolute terms. This development brought the region’s share of total worldwide volumes to CN/HK up from 36.9% to 38.4%, “another indicator for the quickly shifting panels in world trade,” said the report.
Photo: Elmschrat
