Australia’s box trade volumes for imports declined in 2023 when compared to 2022 and export volumes were essentially flat, according to the latest data analysis from Shipping Australia.
Exports demonstrate an increasing reliance on one customer: China
On the export side, Australia was up by just over 5,000 twenty foot boxes* last year, which is a 0.28% on the 2022 calendar year. However, as ever, the total figures obscure a lot of interesting details. For instance, last year the greatest volume falls were recorded in our exports to New Zealand and Japan / Korea but there was a large surge of exports to East Asia – a region that is predominantly comprised of one country: China.
We don’t know why there is a shift in the composition of trade away from New Zealand, Japan and Korea, toward China. It could be for any one, or any combination, of a number of different reasons. But what is clear is that there is a rebalancing of trade toward China and Australia, is, once again, becoming increasingly dependent on one country. And that’s an especially pronounced trend given that there was an upsurge in exports to China both in 2023 and in 2022.
Another interesting export detail is that there was a 40%+ increase in box exports to “Southern Asia” (a region dominated by India). Again, hard to pinpoint why. While this appears to be a small re-balancing toward India, it is probably more of a regaining of what was lost in the previous year as there was a 33.5% fall in box trade in 2022 vs 2021.
Imports: the ledger is written in red ink
Oh my, looking at the import side of the ledger and we can see it is almost uniformly written in red ink. It’s quicker to talk about what import trades didn’t fall flat on their face.
Trade volumes from New Zealand were essentially flat at a 0.88% increase. Import volumes from Japan / Korea were bright with a 14% plus upswing – but, again, this appears to (mostly) be a regaining of what was lost the year before.
As for the Rest of the World? Ugh. It’s horrible, most horrible.
Box trades from Central America, South America, and also the Middle East all tripped over their own feed and faceplanted with a 40% plus fall afro Central America and 20% plus falls from the other two regions.
Trade from Europe and the Med also stuttered with an 18% fall. It would be quite tempting to attribute that fall to the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. However, the Q4 import trade from Europe to Australia has been falling now for some years. Meanwhile, Christmas 2023 goods were probably already landed in Australia by October and the Houthi’s didn’t start attacking ships until the middle of November. So attributing a fall in the box trade to the Houthi attacks on shipping would appear to be unsupported.
Particularly of note was the 6% plus fall in trade volumes from East Asia. That region contains countries that are our biggest trade partners and, particularly, the East Asia region is dominated by China. Australia lost over 110,000 TEUs from the East Asia-Australia route and that compounds with the near 30,000 TEU lost from that route in 2022 vs 2021.
Summary
So we have an increasing export box trade to China and a decreasing import box trade from China, and, barring a few exceptions, we have a mostly declining trade everywhere else.
Make of that what you will.
*NOTE: technically, that’s twenty foot equivalent units, or a “TEU”. One FEU (forty foot unit), i.e. a forty foot box, is equivalent to two twenty foot boxes. The international container shipping industry uses TEU as its unit of measurement.
