North America as an import region
The fact that container flows in North America have increased considerably cannot compensate for the increasingly low pairing of transports. On the contrary – according to the latest figures from CTS, exports from the USA and Canada fell by 7% in the first quarter of 2021, and traffic between the two countries declined even more. The import boom, on the other hand, remains unchanged.
The volume of seaborne goods handled in North America is rising rapidly – as is a lack of paired traffic.
In Q1 / 2021, container volumes in the region rose by 16.6% to a total of 11.9 million teu, according to the service provider Container Trades Statistics (CTS).
Exports fell by 7.4% to 3.6 million teu, while trade between the USA and Canada fell by 10% – though it’s a quantité negligeable, accounting for only 1% of North American container throughput. North American imports, on the other hand, exploded by 32% or 1.99 million teu and now account for 69% of box throughput.
In contrast to the container throughput statistics published by the two German research bodies RWI and ISL, for example, the CTS statistics are admittedly corrected more frequently. But the trend is clear. In terms of container imports into North America, the Far East took the lion’s share of the Q1 / 2021 increases, as expected, with 47.3%, while the Middle East increased its share by 26.9% and sub-Saharan Africa by 16.5%. The latter started out from a low base of 40,000 teu, however.
From Europe, about 65,000 more teu arrived in North America, or a rise of 5%. Only the volumes from Australasia (–5%) and Latin America (–1%) fell.
