The first French armament, CMA CGM, notes a meteoric resumption of global freight transport in containers. According to its director of shipping lines, Olivier Nivoix, consumers, deprived of vacations, outings and certain services, have bought more household goods.
Three questions to Olivier Nivoix, director of shipping lines at CMA CGM.
In a confined world, one expects a drop in world trade. However, you observe the opposite …
The year 2020 is completely outside the norm. In the first half of the year, with the closure of Chinese factories and then the confinement of the rest of the world, the volumes of container transport in the world fell by 7%. But in the second half of the year, it was quite the opposite: demand exploded, with volumes increasing by 4.5%. Most of our markets are currently experiencing double digit growth.
Why such a recovery when we praise local consumption and reindustrialisation?
Anything that has not been spent on services, travel, outings has been spent on everyday life. We are seeing a boom in needs for home and office, computers, children’s furniture, bicycles, coupled with an explosion in e-commerce.
Some shipowners are accused of taking advantage of this to raise prices …
It is true that we limited bookings to Asia at the beginning of the month because we knew our ships were full until the end of the year. But we will be organizing additional departures. With the arrival of nine very large ships of 23,000 containers running on gas, our capacity on this line increases by 6% compared to the fourth quarter of 2019. And it will increase further in the first quarter of 2021. Finally, we are also increasing our container fleet through purchase and rental.
– .
