BIMCO examines the rise in container trade imbalances, which has been driven by faster export growth from East and Southeast Asia compared with all other regions except Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2019, the global container market has grown eight per cent, but growth has been very uneven.
‘Since 2019, the global container market has grown eight per cent, ending at 183.2 million TEU in 2024, according to Container Trade Statistics. However, growth has been very uneven and regional imbalances between exports and imports have increased by 33 per cent,’ says analyst at BIMCO.
In 2019, regional imbalances totaled 58.8 million TEU, equal to 52 per cent of inter-regional trade, but grew to 84.9 million TEU and seventy per cent in 2024. In absolute terms the imbalance in the East and Southeast Asia region remained the largest at 42.4 million, up from 29.4 million TEU in 2019. In other terms, the region exported 3 TEU for every TEU imported in 2024.
The increase in trade imbalances has been driven by faster export growth from East and Southeast Asia compared with all other regions except Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, exports from the Asian region have grown by 10.9 million TEU, whereas the total inter-regional market has grown by only 9.5 million TEU since 2019.
In addition, East and Southeast Asian imports were nine per cent lower in 2024 than in 2019, which contributed to a contraction in exports, especially from Europe and Mediterranean and North America regions.
Historically, the relative imbalance has been the largest in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. In 2024, however, the imbalance in North America was the largest. North America imported 2.5 TEU for every TEU exported. In Sub-Saharan Africa, imports were 2.3 times larger than exports.
The relative imbalance also grew in the Europe and Mediterranean and South and Central America regions, but reduced in Oceania, Sub-Saharan Africa and Indian Subcontinent and Middle East regions.
Overall inter-regional trade balances remained within a 48-53 per cent band between 2012 and 2020. It started climbing in 2021 as exports from East and Southeast Asia grew eleven per cent. In 2024, those regions’ exports ended 21 per cent higher than in 2019, whereas the total inter-regional market grew only eight per cent in the same period.
Imbalances within regions, and specific imbalances for specific container sizes and types, dictate liner operators’ cost for positioning empty containers. But the increasing regional imbalances point to a larger and potentially more costly problem. To accommodate growing head-haul trades, liner operators must deploy ever more and/or larger ships only to see a relatively smaller revenue potential in the back-haul trades.
