|
|
 |
name
|
천일그룹 |
tel
|
|
date
|
2017-06-19 |
E-mail
|
|
title
|
Carriers set new services for growing Indian trade |
|
Carriers set new services for growing Indian subcontinent trade
Growing South Asian exports has led to the rolling out of new services by container lines confident that rising volume will continue to be generated by the subcontinent''s powerhouses India and Pakistan.
Westbound volume rose 3.4 percent year over year from January through April, according to Drewry and based on the latest data from Container Trades Statistics. While this is lower than the 2016 growth of almost 5 percent, rising container volume is expected to continue.
“Future growth seems assured as consumer demand remains high in India, while Pakistan stands to be one of the major beneficiaries of Chinese One Belt, One Road investment,” Drewry noted.
Container volumes at India’s major or public ports increased 8.2 percent year over year in the first two months of fiscal 2017 and 2018. The country’s 12 major ports together handled 1.5 million TEU during April and May, compared with 1.4 million TEU in the corresponding months last year, according to port statistics analyzed by JOC.com.
This growth is attracting new services from the carriers. From the end of June, Hyundai Merchant Marine, CMA CGM, Shipping Corp. of India, and Korea Marine Transport Co. and Pendulum Express Lines will launch the China West India Express (CWI) service. Drewry said the new loop will reportedly use six 4,600 TEU vessels — two from HMM and one each from the other service partners — on a rotation of Xingang, Qingdao, Ningbo, Singapore, Port Klang, Nhava Sheva, Mundra, Hazira, Colombo, Port Klang, Singapore, and back to Xingang.
Over the past year, Singapore-based APL has introduced three new services into the India market. The India-Pakistan-Mediterranean (IPM) service, the India East Coast Express (IEX) service that directly connects the North Asia markets of Korea and China with the Indian port of Chennai, and the India-Pakistan-Europe service, which directly links the key South Asian markets of India and Pakistan to major ports in Europe.
The weekly service connecting India and Pakistan with the Mediterranean will be launched by APL, CMA CGM, and Cosco as the carriers broaden their Indian subcontinent routings. The first sailing will leave Karachi in Pakistan on July 2 with an additional 12 ports in the rotation — Khor Fakkan, Karachi, Nhava Sheva, Mundra, Djibouti, Jeddah, Damietta, Piraeus, Malta, Aliaga, Mersin, and Port Said West.
“With its strategic port rotation that serves the major transshipment hubs of Malta, Damietta, Piraeus, Nhava Sheva, and Mundra, shippers can tap on APL’s global network at these relay ports for further connectivity into vast key European, Asia, and the US East Coast markets,” said Eric Eng, APL head of Asia-Europe trade.
The service will use five vessels of 4,250 TEU, although the ships to be deployed have not yet been identified.
An APL spokesman said based on economic indicators, India was expected to maintain a trade growth between 6 percent and 7 percent in 2017 from the previous year, and as an agrarian economy, a good monsoon season in the second half of 2017 would increase growth even further. “In particular, industry experts predict outbound growth with the US, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Mediterranean regions, given demand for its manufactured goods including agricultural products, garments and textiles, handicrafts, automobile parts, chemicals, as well as construction materials such as granite, marble, and steel. Inbound growth is expected to concentrate from Asia with strong imports of electronic goods, automobile parts, and chemicals,” the spokesman told JOC.com.
According to the 2017 Agility Emerging Markets Logistics Index, more than 800 representatives of logistics corporations from around the globe classified India as the most attractive market with the greatest opportunities for growth.
“Sales of logistics services in India reached a figure that was the equivalent of $320 billion in 2016. This means that its share of GDP was 14 percent, while the average figure in industrial nations is 8 percent,” said Thomas Hundt, director of Germany Trade and Invest in India. “Market researchers are also forecasting strong growth in all segments in the Indian transport and logistics sector.”
Container shipping analyst SeaIntel said the trade lanes to and from South Asia gained a lot of attention in recent years. India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan saw considerable growth in production as companies expand manufacturing in these countries as an alternative to China, where coastal labour costs have been increasing sharply.
The analyst said the average vessel size on the trade had increased consistently as ships cascaded down from the oversupplied East-West trades. Average weekly deployed capacity rose significantly from July 2014, as the carriers injected a massive amount of tonnage.
However, SeaIntel noted that while the average vessel size has increased, the number of active services decreased throughout the period in order for the carriers to balance out the capacity injection that would otherwise have happened.
“While most of the analysed trade lanes showed a rather stable level of capacity deployed, we observed an interesting development in the trade lane connecting Asia to the Indian subcontinent. Here, carriers have injected considerable amounts of capacity in recent years, but we do see a more controlled approach in recent months, as three services have been closed or merged in 2017, so we are no longer seeing capacity growth rates of 15 percent to 20 percent year over year and for the coming 12 months, weekly capacity will actually contract by 6.2 percent,” the analyst predicted. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|