Today’s Growth Is the Real Thing

(International Freighting Weekly – Damian Brett)

Statistics were misunderstood and volume increases not down to restocking

Current growth in cargo volumes is sustainable, and is down to a genuine increase in real growth and not inventory re-stocking, according to speakers at the Shippers’ Voice seminars at this week’s Multimodal exhibition.

President and CEO of Cargolux Ulrich Ogiermann and analysts Mike Garratt, director of MDS Transmodal, and Ben Hackett, director of Hackett Associates, all agreed that consumer demand had fuelled growth in trade and cargo volumes over the first four months of the year.

“Restocking has already taken place,” said Ogiermann. “From our point of view, it took place last year and drove up demand at the end of 2009, and maybe also in the first month of 2010. Now we are seeing a genuine increase of air cargo demand, because consumers are requesting high-value goods, such as mobile phones, ipads and so on. There is genuine demand coming back.” Read more here.