Hapag-Lloyd CEO Rolf Habben Jansen put a positive spin on the container shipping downturn during a conference call Thursday as his company logged yet another quarter for the record books.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the bottom is falling out of the market,\u201d maintained the head of the world\u2019s fifth-largest ocean carrier.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at volume and demand, we saw a very steep decline in weeks 34 and 35 [the last two weeks of August]. Then things rebounded a bit. Ever since Golden Week [the first week of October], it has been up and down. It was relatively weak last week. This week started stronger. It\u2019s quite volatile.\u201d<\/p>\n
Container Trades Statistics reported a 25% year-on-year drop in trans-Pacific volumes and 9% drop in global volumes in September. \u201cThe global economy is certainly not shrinking 10-20%,\u201d said Habben Jansen, who argued that \u201ca significant element here is a correction of inventory.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a long time where a lot of boxes got stuck in global supply chains. With the easing of congestion, those are now being delivered to the warehouses, which probably filled up quicker than anticipated. People logically reacted by saying, \u2018I\u2019d better slow down a bit with new orders.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
High inventories lead to a \u201cshort-term drop in volume,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s always the question: Is it mainly caused by an inventory correction or is it weakening demand? I\u2019d say it\u2019s probably a little of both.”<\/p>\n