Africa Gains Momentum in Global Container Shipping

New figures from Container Trade Statistics (CTS) for cargo loaded in January indicate that one of the most important trends seen last year is continuing. Africa is strengthening its position as an increasingly significant player in global liner shipping.

According to CTS data, the four container trade lanes with the fastest growth all involve Africa. Additional analysis from consultancy Sea-Intelligence shows that Africa also leads year-on-year growth rankings for both imports and exports across the regions used in the CTS global breakdown.

Data from Alphaliner for November last year showed that capacity on the Asia–Africa route (excluding Middle East–Africa and India–Africa trades) reached almost 2.2 million TEU. This represented a sharp rise from 1.4 million TEU recorded a year earlier, an increase of 54.3 percent. By mid-December, services connected to Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 8.1 percent of the global container fleet, equal to about 2.68 million TEU.

A major contributor to Africa’s growing importance in liner shipping has been Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC), currently the world’s largest container carrier. Last year, the company played a key role in elevating West Africa onto Alphaliner’s list of the top 10 trade routes served by the largest vessels.

MSC began shifting some of its biggest ships away from the Asia–Europe trade and redeploying them to the rapidly expanding Asia–West Africa route. This move pushed the average vessel size on that route up by 28 percent, increasing from 6,343 TEU to more than 9,000 TEU.

Another notable finding from the latest CTS data concerns the growing imbalance on the Asia–Europe trade lane. The gap between Asia-bound and Europe-bound cargo has now exceeded a 4:1 ratio for the first time, a trend Sea-Intelligence attributed to “very weak” European exports.

“The rapid escalation in imbalance on the Asia-Europe trade skews the economics related to empty repatriation, and de facto increases the unit costs for the carriers on the head-haul,” Sea-Intelligence noted in its latest weekly report.