Air cargo continued its recent trend of double-digit growth, registering a worldwide volume increase in August of 12.9% year-over-year, according to the latest data from WorldACD.
Growth in direct ton kilometers was even higher at 14.6% year-over-year, underscoring another trend showing that the average distance between point of origin and point of destination of air cargo shipments keeps growing, just like the average shipment size.
Revenues in U.S. dollar terms increased by more than 23%, helped by an average year-over-year yield increase of 15 cents. WorldACD attributed the uncommonly high yield increase to the strengthening of the Euro against the dollar.
So far this year, the origins Asia-Pacific and Europe have outperformed other regions consistently. But North America also logged robust growth in August. These three regions each posted more than 15% year-over-year volume growth.
Southern hemisphere markets like South America and Indonesia (two origins that are hardly contributing to this year’s growth spurt) recorded a year-on-year growth in August of 11% and 21%, respectively.
The origin Africa, on the other hand, demonstrated a volume contraction (-4%), caused purely by declining business to its main markets Europe and the Middle East.
As expected, most of the top air cargo origins in the world, such as Hong Kong, Germany, parts of China, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, contribute to the booming air cargo market. France, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, however, are performing well below the average for 2017.
With a growth of more than 25% for the year up till now, Vietnam and Belgium are moving up in the rankings, Vietnam showing growth across the board, and Belgium clearly profiting from its focus on improving its pharma transport infrastructure.
On specific air cargo sectors, meanwhile, WorldACD reported that growth in the transport of high-tech & other vulnerable goods clearly outpaces the year-to-date growth in general cargo: 18% vs. 12.4%. Pharmaceuticals was the only other category growing faster than general cargo.
Of all specific cargo products, the origin Asia-Pacific accounts for 25% of volume, but accounts for 30% of the revenues in U.S. dollar terms.
Photo: Karelj
