As the end of the traditional peak season nears, Sea-Intelligence said the spot rate declines over the past 2 weeks are a very clear indicator that the "peak season did not really materialize" this year.
The Danish maritime data analysis firm Sea-Intelligence noted that aside from this, "there are dark clouds looming over the horizon" for the Transpacific trade, in part linked to US consumer behaviour.
"One element is the change in consumer behaviour we saw during the pandemic (from services to goods), which is very likely to change back and have a negative impact on import volumes," said Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.
"Digging deeper, we see that in recent months, the growth is concentrated on goods which are not predominantly moving in containers," he added, citing data from the US BEA (Bureau of Economic Analysis).
[Source: Sea-Intelligence]
"As we can see in Figure 1, the largest increase is for recreational goods and services, from 12% of the consumption in 2019 to 17.2% by July 2023," Murphy said.
He added that looking deeper at the data, the largest growth within this category is exhibited by 'Video, Audio, Photographic, Information Processing Equipment, and Media'.
Going a step further, Murphy said the 'Information Processing Equipment' is genuinely growing fast in mid-2023.
"The main driver of strong growth within this category is clearly seen to be Computer Software and Accessories, and software is mainly not moving in containers, which means that this strong boost to consumer spending does not benefit container shipping lines," the Sea-Intelligence chief said.
"Another major growth component on goods spending is the overall 'Vehicles' category," Murphy said, noting however that new vehicles are indeed growing well, "but once again, these are mainly not containerized."