Australia’s box trade volumes are undergoing a marked slowdown, according to the latest quarterly statistics collated by Shipping Australia.
Changes in the export trade; trade concentrates on China
Exports volume of containerised cargo from Australia to countries in our major export destination regions of South East Asia and Japan / Korea are in decline. And in the case of Japan / Korea, in sharp decline. It’s not all gloom though – export throughput from Australia to East Asia* has risen considerably in Q1 2023 when compared both to Q1 2022 and Q1 2021.
Containerised exports from Australia to East Asia, South East Asia and to Japan / Korea together make up just over 68% of all containerised exports from Australia in Q1 this year. Exports from Australia to South East Asia and to Japan / Korea make up just under 40% of all containerised exports from Australia.
It could be argued that an increase in volumes to one region that is dominated by one country, China, and declines in volumes to our other major trading regions is an example of concentration of trade. We will leave it to readers to decide whether a concentration of trade with, what is basically China, is a good, neutral, or a bad, development.
*East Asia here includes China, Hong Kong, Macau, Mongolia, Taiwan and the Philippines. The region-groupings of these statistics were set prior to 2015. The reason as to why the Philippines were originally assigned to East Asia instead of, say, South East Asia, is unknown.
Skydiving in the import trade
Well, there are no bright spots in this sea of red ink.
The eye catching fall is the import trade from Euro-Med to Australia with an astounding (horrifying?) fall-off-the-precipice drop of -22% of Q1 2023 vs Q1 2021 and a mildly-less horrifying drop of just over -16% when comparing Q1 2023 vs Q1 2022. These are the kind of falls that even Felix Baumgartner could become scared of.
But, believe it or not, there is much worse to come.
Namely, percentage figures can sometimes mislead as to the truth.
Have a look at the East Asia to Australia figures. At -13% or thereabouts, it’s a smaller percentage fall than the Euro-Med trade. But in absolute terms? Much bigger in terms of TEUs lost. Roughly twice as many TEUs in fact. The fall is somewhat hidden by the fact that the TEU volumes from East Asia to Australia are north of 400,000 per quarter whereas the Europe to Australia figures are about a quarter of that.
We will leave to more qualified commentators as to whether this is a mere come-down from the peaks of COVID pandemic or whether or not this does or does not bode well for the future.
