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OOCL 2017 volume up 4% to 6.3m teu

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Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) reported a 3.3% fall in volumes for the fourth quarter of 2017, but a much better margin, with overall average revenue per teu increasing by 9.6% compared with the previous corresponding period.

Total volumes fell to 1.61m teu in the last quarter of the year from 1.67m teu previously while total revenues increased by 6.0% to $1.38bn from 1.30bn in the previous corresponding period, OOCL said in a press release.

While loadable capacity increased by 1.0%, the overall load factor fell 3.7%. In terms of the respective trade lanes, all major trade lanes except the intra-Asia/Australasia trade rose, with lifting in the latter plunging 14.2% to 736,857 teu in the fourth quarter.

For the full year, total volumes rose 3.6% to 6.30m teu from 6.08m teu previously while revenues saw a good increase of 15.4% to $5.43bn from $4.70bn previously.

This showed a good performance from the Hong Kong-based group that has been purchased by Cosco in the past year, as loadable capacity rose to 5.1% with the delivery of its latest series of megaships.

While the overall load factor was 1.2% lower than the previous corresponding period overall average revenue per teu in 2017 increased by 11.4%.

Buoyed by good recovery in the fourth quarter, the volumes as well as revenue rose in the key transpacific and Asia-Europe trades. The latter especially saw volumes rise 11% to 293,457 teu in the fourth quarter and full year liftings jumped by a fifth to 1.14m teu. Revenue recovery in this trade was equally impressive, rising 24.3% to $270.5m in the fourth quarter and by almost half to $1.10bn for the full year.

The much higher based transpacific trade saw volumes rise 7.5% in the fourth quarter to 472,503 teu and 16.3% to 1.81m teu for the full year. Revenue also saw good gains, rising 7.1% to $531.6m in the fourth quarter and by 20% to $2.07bn for the full year.