Cargo volume shrunk by 5.4% in September: WorldACD

Nov 2, 2019: WorldACD has reported that in September 2019 air cargo volume shrunk by 5.4 percent year-on-year (YoY), yield (in USD) by 11.5 percent, and revenues from air cargo (in USD) by 16.3 percent.

Calling the story “monotonous, dull”, WorldACD said that September was no different than most of the previous months of this year.

“All origin regions suffered, Asia Pacific most (volumes down by 5.8 percent YoY, and revenues in USD by 18.9 percent) and Africa least (volumes down by 3.2 percent YoY, and revenues in USD by 6.2 percent),” said the report.

According to the September numbers, Middle East & South Asia did better than all other destination areas (volume YoY -1 percent only). During the first three quarters of the year, all areas showed negative YoY trends, both in outgoing and in incoming volumes; Africa outbound was the only exception, registering a mere 1.1 percent increase.

Only 10 countries showed a volume increase YoY. As a group, these top-10 realised a growth of 8.3 percent. These top-10 countries' growth was driven by special cargo. “Compared with the first nine months of 2018, the top-10 countries increased their combined special cargo volume by 10.3 percent. The other thirty countries barely managed to grow in this category: +0.6 percent. But even more telling is the fact that in the top-10 countries combined, more than half of the total consists of special cargo (51.4 percent for Q1-3 2018 vs 52.3 percent for Q1-3 2019). For the other thirty countries, the share of special cargo is only a quarter,” said the report.

Norway topped the list with almost 20 percent growth, whilst Pakistan and Vietnam scored above 10 percent. Egypt, Indonesia, South Africa and China are also on the list. China showed no overall growth, but it recorded a 12.8 percent YoY growth in special cargo (mainly high-tech).

In Q1-3 2019 there was a USD-yield drop by 8 percent YoY for general cargo, but by 4 percent for special cargo. For the top-10 countries, their combined special cargo yields dropped by only 2 percent.