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During the pandemic retail sales and personal savings have been increasing in tandem and supported US consumer demand for imports from the Far East. Now, retail sales appear to be receding and the question is whether the past two years’ savings will be enough to support continued high import volumes as consumer sentiment is dropping and the war in Ukraine continues.
Record high US seaborne exports of coarse grains in March of 9.2 million tonnes took total Q1 exports to 21.3 million tonnes.
Argentina is on track to boost grain exports by 40% in 2024, recovering from last year’s drought which afflicted crops, but still below the 2019-2022 average. Climate patterns and government policy are shaping the outlook.
Global rice exports could fall by at least 4% in 2023 because of India’s restrictions on exports and El Niño’s impact on supply. Replacing India’s rice exports is challenging, as India accounts for almost 40% of the world’s export of rice. Low rainfall caused by El Niño is also weakening the outlook for global rice exports in 2024.
In 2019, prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, jet fuel contributed an estimated 8% of oil products’ cargo demand. When travel restrictions were imposed during the pandemic, air travel suffered significantly and jet fuel shipments in 2021 were down approximately 33% compared to 2019. Airlines’ capacity has been on a slow recovery path since bottoming out in April 2020 but remains significantly lower than 2019 levels.
Chinese iron ore imports fell to 88.5 million tonnes in July, the lowest level since May 2020.
So far this year, container volumes have fallen nearly 2% year-on-year while average freight rates have declined, reaching 2019 levels in September. Since then, they have continued to fall. However, the cost to charter a ship remains 25% higher than in 2019.
Deliveries of new container ships during the first seven months of the year reached a new record high of 1.2 million TEU in 2023, beating the previous record by 0.2 million TEU. As recycling of ships has remained low, the fleet capacity has grown 4.3% since January.
In March 2023 China’s economic recovery caused a pick-up in capesize freight rates and in sale and purchase activity for this ship type. As a result, five-year-old second-hand prices rallied 22% m/m, reaching USD 54 million by the end of the month.
In 2023, only seven product tankers with combined deadweight tonnes (DWT) capacity of 265,000 were recycled. This was a year-on-year drop of 82% compared to 1.5 million DWT (27 product tankers) recycled in 2022. It was also the lowest level of recycling seen since records began in 1996.
