Market Trend For Seaborne Car Carriers: Whether The Recent Downtrend Will Continue?
The car carrier sector has for some time been seen as one of the fastest growing parts of world shipping. Last year, car carrier sector demand growth appeared to have stalled. It looks like its continuing on to this year as well. The road has hardly been smooth for seaborne car trade in recent years.
Slowdown:
- Relocation of car production limited shipments from key Asian exporters,
- Economic and political disruptions for imports into emerging regions has prevented further acceleration.
- Supply and demand trends and the slowdown in fleet growth appears, with demand looking lacklustre, to have been insufficient to prevent weaker fundamentals.
- Some owners still think ‘big is beautiful’ and that the road ahead seems clear.
Prospects :
- The growth expected from car buyers in the developing world has been coming through.
- New centres of car production are emerging, helping diversify the route matrix.
- Shipments from non conventional space, Indian exports for example, doubled in that time.
- Demand fundamentals look robust, and even western world demand will also see some upside as the developed economies gradually move out of recession.
- With billions of consumers in developing countries keen to become car owners, this trend looks set to bolster trade in the future.
- If trade picks up,then things could get quite tight fairly quickly and investment will be needed to provide seaborne transportation for the cars of the future.
Source: Clarksons
