Launch of the Box Trade Analyser (BTA) cloud-based information portal

The container shipping industry is being forced to adapt to a new regulatory environment following the European Commission’s recent decision to end the Consortia Block Exemption Regulation (CBER) in April 2024. At a time of regulatory change and uncertainty, up-to-date and comprehensive data on container shipping industry demand, capacity and performance is ever more important.

MDS Transmodal is therefore today launching the Box Trade Analyser (BTA), which is a new cloud-based information portal. BTA provides comprehensive container shipping data on trade by world region, liner shipping services, the global container fleet and trends in service performance.

“Whether you’re a shipper, a shipping line, a freight forwarder, a container terminal or a port you need the most comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date data on container shipping to inform your decision-making”, said Antonella Teodoro, Senior Consultant at MDS Transmodal. “Box Trade Analyser has been developed to provide decision makers with easy-to-use and robust container shipping data”.

Intra-Far East remains the brightest market in the liner shipping industry

The influx of more than 1.6m TEU of additional container shipping capacity between the third quarter of 2022 and the same quarter this year has resulted in an overall annual increase of 7% in global fleet capacity. However, as shipping lines have been adding new port calls to their service rotations and reducing their port-to-port speed, deployed capacity has increased at only 3%.

This trend has not been the same across all trade lanes. The highest growth in both fleet and scheduled capacity has been in the intra-Far East market where fleet capacity is up by 11% and scheduled capacity has increased by 5%. The additional capacity offered in the intra-Far East market has been used to strengthen connectivity between China and other Asian countries as the production of manufactured goods continues to spread across the continent, most notably to Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. With a 23% share of global deployed capacity, the intra-Far East remains, in fact, the brightest market in the liner shipping industry.

Conversely, both demand and supply on the transpacific trade corridor have remained on downward trajectories, with demand down by more than 5% and scheduled capacity down by no less than 30%.

On the performance side, MDS Transmodal’s Port Calls Indicator for container shipping at a global level improved by 6% in 2023 Q3 compared to 2022 Q3, as shipping lines continue to adjust their network to serve more regions and improve utilisation.

All of these key trends that characterize the global shipping industry, can be followed via MDS Transmodal’s new Box Trade Analyser (BTA).

Key features of the BTA include:

• Objective and transparent data on container shipping demand, capacity and performance, allowing users to benchmark and track changes in the liner shipping industry.
• Up-to-date data, providing information for the most recent quarter, the previous quarter and the same quarter in the previous year. 
  
• Comprehensive and global set of data ranging from trade flows to scheduled capacity, as well as capacity on order at the carrier level and by fuel type; service performance at both the detailed port level as well as at the global level.
• Data can be easily interrogated so that users can build their own tables for further analysis.
• Data is presented as graphs which users can easily download and use in reports and presentations.

The BTA is based on datasets used by UNCTAD for its Liner Shipping Connectivity Index (LSCI) and the World Bank for its Logistics Performance Index (LPI). The same datasets are used by competition regulators such as the European Commission to assess the effectiveness of existing legislation and by lawyers to consider market shares on trade lanes.

Register for your FREE trial today: https://www.boxtradeanalyser.com or, for more info, contact Antonella Teodoro on +44-(0)1244 348301 or antonella.teodoro@mdst.co.uk. 

MDS Transmodal is a firm of transport economists which specialises in maritime and freight transport. The company works with senior management in the private and public sectors to provide strategic advice based on quantitative analysis, modelling and sectoral expertise.