London - The half-year report for loaded container volumes, made possible by the release of June’s loaded container traffic data by Container Trades Statistics Limited (CTS), shows that the year-on-year deficit is definitely narrowing, but that growth remains tantalisingly out of reach.

According to CTS data, worldwide loaded volumes were down by 1.5% YoY in June at 15.1 million TEU. The crumb of comfort is that June’s annual decline was the smallest since July 2022 (-0.2% YoY), indicating that growth may arrive shortly.

After six months of the year, CTS’ initial count of world container traffic – not including empties or transhipment – was down by 4.3%.

The last few years have seen significant volatility in growth rates, which can give a distorted view of the overall strength (or lack of) of the market. To try and put things in perspective, the trade slowdown this year has brough CTS’ average monthly year-to-date world total down below that of pre-pandemic 2019, by 1.4%, or roughly 200,000 TEU.

CTS’ free regional data pinpoints where the issues are (see other charts). The three big import and export hubs – Asia, North America and Europe – all showed hefty contractions in 1H23. The worst, from a growth perspective, being North American imports at -16.3%.

Again, some perspective is necessary as North American imports only look so bad now because they were so high in the corresponding period. The region’s monthly 2023 YTD imports were actually 1.1% higher than the 2019 average, beating the global average performance.

Stronger global volumes are expected in the second half of the year to bring the end-year total closer to that of 2022. Drewry recently downgraded its forecast for 2023 total port throughput – which includes empties and transhipped boxes as well as laden volumes – down to 0.8%, as per the July monthly update of the Container Forecaster. After all of the dramatic highs and lows of the past few years there can be no doubt that without Covid and Russia’s War in Ukraine the container market’s growth trajectory would have been so much better.