Sea-Intelligence: Global container demand 6-7% below GDP since 2019

Sea-Intelligence: Global demand 6-7% below GDP since 2019 (Photo: TheDCN)

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, global container demand grew roughly in line with global GDP. In the decades before, container demand even grew faster than GDP, but this relationship disappeared in the pre-pandemic period.

Using the known global GDP growth rates for 2020-2022 and the current estimate for 2023, Sea-Intelligence calculate how much global TEUs should have grown versus 2019 if they had followed GDP growth. Comparing this to the actual TEU growth versus 2019, Sea-Intelligence said, "what we see is that compared to the growth rate one would expect based on global GDP, the container markets are -5.9% below."

Source: Sea-Intelligence

TEUs is a coarse measure of global demand, and TEUMiles is a better measure, especially when considering the global container vessel fleet capacity. In Figure 1, Sea-Intelligence calculates the difference between the GDP-implied growth rate and the actual TEUMiles growth rate.

As of August 2023, global demand is 6.8% below a growth pattern that would have followed global GDP growth. This is not good for the carriers, which are currently taking delivery of a significant number of new ships.

Read more:

• Relationship Between Global GDP and Container Demand

Source: Phaata.com (According to Sea-Intelligence)

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