OOCL sees better Q1 with 9% volume growth

Reflecting the still weak market however, total revenues increased by just 1.7% to $1.39bn from $1.36bn previously. Overall average revenue per teu decreased by 6.6% from the previous corresponding period.

With OOCL's new bigger ships coming online there was an increase of 3.7% in loadable capacity, but despite this, overall load factor was 3.6% higher than the same period in 2013.

OOCL's traditional strength in the Asia-Europe and intra-Asia trades came back strongly though, with both volumes and revenue rising sharply on the former. Asia-Europe volume rose 9.7% to 226.717 teu on a 7.6% rise in revenue to $282.3m.While Intra-Asia volumes spiked 14.5% to 722,971 teu, revenue only rose 4.2% to $493.6m. The transpacific sector was the worst performer for OOCL, seeing flat volume growth and a 2.2% drop in revenue.