With shipments of Australian coal to China starting again after a two-year de-facto import ban, this article focuses on the trends and outlook relating to international coal flows. Japan, China, India and South Korea collectively account for over half of worldwide coal imports, while Australia, Indonesia, the Russian Federation and the United States account for three quarters of worldwide coal exports. In the last two years Australia has largely been able compensate for the loss of the Chinese market, which accounted for 26% of total coal exports in 2019. Changes in demand and production patterns are likely to affect overall flows as well as market shares between countries.
Trade Data Service
In terms of output, South Africa’s economy is the second largest on the continent after Nigeria. From an airfreight and container shipping perspective, South Africa is the most important market. Annual air cargo traffic is in the order of 350,000 tonnes, while container throughout at main ports has been around 4 million TEU per year. Economically, South Africa has had a bumpy ride over the past decade, and this is also reflected in international trade figures. However, 2022 performance was good with trade value growing at 9.5% overall. 2023 expectations point towards further growth, although the current power crisis could derail this.
Ukraine’s exports and imports were down substantially in 2022. This kind of development is not surprising given the amount of disruption that has and continues to take place. However, the remarkable thing is that trade continues and has even rebounded throughout the year. Ukraine’s trade has clearly benefitted from its border with the European Union and access to Western European logistics networks to move goods in and out of the country. This analysis looks at how the structure of Ukraine’s imports and exports have changed throughout 2022.
COVID-19 vaccine production has led to significant additional temporary global vaccine traffic. However, with countries such as Brazil, China or India growing their manufacturing base this could create new regular cross border flows. This article looks at global vaccine production and cross border vaccine flows in and out of China, India, the United States and the European Union, as well as emerging flows out of countries such as Brazil and Russia.
The value of Chinese exports increased by 7% in 2022, while imports grew only 2.5%. This follows growth of 30% in 2021. These numbers hide some very uneven performance on a province and trading partner level, which reflect changing Chinese trading patterns with key partners such as the US, but also economic weakness in Europe.
Brazilian air trade grew by 2% in 2022 and is now about 14% above 2019 levels. As with other air cargo markets around the world the first half of the year was strong while volumes declined in the second half of the year and particularly in November and December. This is in line with a drop in manufacturing activity in the last months of the year. Manufacturing activity is expected to recover in 2023. In the medium-term Brazil could well benefit from a trend to dual sourcing.
The overall expectation for trade in most large economies – the US, the European Union, Japan and even China - is for little growth or even declining volumes. The next year is likely to look very different to last year and the next three years very different to the last three years. Southeast Asia and South Asia are expected to show much stronger performance than Northeast Asia. This article discusses 2022 and 2023 import and export performance across Northeast, Southeast and South Asia.
Sufficient, reliable, and affordable shipping capacity is crucial for the viability of import and export businesses. Over the past three years most of that was missing due to congestion, shutdowns, blank sailings, and obscene shipping rates. Fortunately, things are improving, but problems remain, particularly with regard to connectivity in smaller markets. Under these circumstances there is merit in industry and Government considering taking control of feeder capacity to support ongoing connections for exporters and importers into hubs where connectivity has been largely unaffected over the past years.
Airfreight is primarily an industrial tool, with roughly three quarters of airfreight traffic linked to the various stages of production. Global manufacturing and airfreight tend to move in sync. Based on the outlook for manufacturing we expect US airfreight exports to decline by about 7% and imports to drop by about 3% in 2023.
China accounts for almost a quarter of the value of worldwide imports of manufactured goods. That is significantly more than any other country. Germany, by contrast, accounts for about 8%, the US 7% and Japan about 5%. The European Union and the United Kingdom account for about the same amount as China, but almost two thirds of this trade is between countries within the bloc. While China’s weight in the world economy has increased, this increase has been uneven and the dependence on China varies significantly across economies.