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DP World's container volume surges as global trade outlook improves

Global ports operator DP World said on Tuesday that its global portfolio of container terminals handled 52.3 million TEUs, up 10 per cent on year-on-year basis, in the first nine months of 2017 as the trading outlook improved.
The Dubai-based company said its three regions saw third quarter growth rates accelerate even more than the second quarter of 2017, particularly terminals in Middle East and Africa, Europe and the Americas.
The world's fourth largest ports operator said its third quarter growth rates accelerated to 13.5 per cent year-on-year on a reported basis and 13.3 per cent on a like-for-like basis, ahead of second quarter growth and an industry estimate of 5.5 per cent throughput growth in 2017.
"Global trade outlook improved significantly in 2017 with the World Trade Organisation recently upgrading trade growth from 2.4 per cent to 3.6 per cent in 2017 and all three DP World regions saw third quarter growth rates accelerate even more than the second quarter of 2017, particularly our terminals in Middle East & Africa, Europe and the Americas. The UAE handled 11.6 million TEU in nine months, growing 4.6 per cent year-on-year," DP World said.
At a 'consolidated' level - ports where DP World has main control - terminals handled 27.3 million TEU during the first nine months of 2017, a 24.2 per cent improvement in performance on a reported basis.
DP World Group chairman and chief executive Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said the recovery of global trade in 2017 has outperformed previous expectations and has seen significant upward revisions by economists and industry experts.
"Benefitting from the improved trading environment and market share gains from the new shipping alliances, our global portfolio continues to deliver ahead-of-market growth and this across all three regions. We have seen an acceleration of growth rates in the third quarter as we employ the right strategy and the relevant deep-water capacity in the key markets," he said.
He said the growth was "encouraging". A total of 1.5 million TEU of new capacity was added at Jebel Ali's Terminal 3 in Dubai in the third quarter, and 0.5 million TEU at Prince Rupert in Canada, which provided us room for continued growth in these key markets, he said.
"We are pleased to see third quarter UAE volumes continue to grow despite uncertainty in the region and the performance across our terminals in the Middle East & Africa, Americas and Europe remains strong," said Sulayem.
"We expect our portfolio's volume growth to continue to outperform the market and given the encouraging performance so far, we remain well placed to meet full year 2017 market expectations," said Sulayem.
- issacjohn@khaleejtimes.com