Watch: How the container market evolved in Q4

BIMCO’s chief market analyst, Peter Sand, provides his view on the current state of the container shipping market paying attention to the developing trade war and tariffs and their impact on the container shipping industry, which seems to experience barriers in comparison to 2018.

Specifically, Mr Sand states that it seems as if the imports are not in need of buying more goods, at least from an import point of view. It wasn’t delivering like the January 1^st expectations for an escalation that brought around what we now know as “front loading” of imports art the end of last year.

Everyone expected and feared the next round of escalating trade war on 1^st January 2019.

We haven’t seen anything going the right way since we started the trade war… this has only gone one way, and that is the negative way

… Mr Sand highlighted.

Phase one trade deal is just “so much smoke” coming out of the negotiations and it is all part of the negotiations that they also try to let us know that is going in specific ways.

In container shipping industry the pressure remains despite some of the trade war damage being offset by a reshuffling of manufacturing in Asia.

The next months:

2018 perhaps was a turning point of the container shipping sector, in comparison to 2019 which is very likely to result being an extremely dull year. Moreover, Mr Sand stated that in Q3 of 2019, the global demand growth was at 1%, a number, unlikely to turn around for the 4^th quarter. Yet, concerning demand, BIMCO saw a very strong demand going into Europe, along with Far East who have been the positive aspects of the demand growth for this year.

In addition, the trade wear has affected Christmas. Changes illustrated by Christmas lights are taking place on a much larger scale, as a reshuffle of manufacturing in Asia has led to changing export patterns, with US containarized imports coming from

• Asia: increased by 1%
• Vietnam: increased by 31.6%
• Cambodia: increased by 32.8%
• China: decreased by 7.3%

Overall, BIMCO estimates that the fleet will increase by 3.7% in 2019.