Air cargo volumes continue to grow as North America steps up

Air cargo’s impressive growth figures continued in August as North American performance improved, while yields are also showing signs of improvement.
The latest figures from analyst WorldACD show that air cargo demand in weight terms increased by 12.9% year on year, with cargo being flown over longer distances and the average shipment size continuing to grow.
The analyst also reported that US dollar revenues increased by 23% during the month, helped by an “uncommonly high” yield increase of $0.15 and by the strengthening of the dollar against the euro.
“In the year so far, the origins Asia Pacific and Europe have outperformed other regions consistently, but August brought robust growth from North America as well,” WorldACD said.
“These three regions each posted more than 15% year-on-year volume growth. In North America, the only ‘outlier’ was domestic air cargo, which hardly grew, another quite persistent trend.
“From the origin Africa, we noted a year-on-year volume contraction (-4%), caused purely by declining business to its main markets Europe and the Middle East.
“But southern hemisphere markets like South America and Indonesia – two other origins hardly contributing to this year’s growth spurt – had reason to rejoice with a YoY growth in August of 11% and 21% respectively.”
WorldACD said that most of the world’s leading origins also noted growth, but France, Australia and the United Arab Emirates are performing well below the average for 2017, “thus seeing their relative position under some threat”.
“With a growth of more than 25% for the year up till now, Vietnam and Belgium are moving up in the rankings, Vietnam showing growth across the board and Belgium clearly profiting from its focus on improving its pharma transport infrastructure,” the analyst said.
Other findings from WorldACD’s monthly wrap up include:
– Growth in the transport of high tech & other vulnerable goods clearly outpaces the year-to-date growth in general cargo: 18% vs. 12.4%. Pharmaceuticals was the only other category growing faster than general cargo.
– Of all specific cargo products, 25% of the volume originates in Asia Pacific, but 30% of the revenues (in USD);
– In the transport of perishables in 2017 compared to 2016, the following picture emerged: growth was mainly driven by the flower markets, which increased by 9.9%, and thus did much better than the markets in Fruits & Vegetables (+5.9%) and Fish & Seafood (+4.9%);
– The two most important flower markets show very different fortunes in 2017: whilst flower transport in the Colombia-US market increased by 18% year on year, the market from Kenya to The Netherlands contracted by 1.6%. Yields fell slightly in both.
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