Drewry, a shipping consultancy, said that so far in 2017, the volume of container traffic on the westbound route from Asia to the Mediterranean Sea has been extremely low, but the volume of export cargo on the return route in the opposite direction is soaring.

Similar to the Asia-North Europe trade, the Asia-Mediterranean/North Africa trade backhaul is currently at high levels. Among them, the cargo volume of eastbound routes increased by 16% in the first two months of 2017, far exceeding the 3% decline in cargo volume of westbound routes.

In 2016, the container volume growth of the Asia-Mediterranean route reached 2.5%, exceeding the 0.3% increase in the container volume of the Asia-North Europe route. Although growth in container traffic on the Asia-Mediterranean route was slow at the beginning of the year, the growth rate of this trade has improved slightly. Most of the growth in container volumes this year has come from the Western Mediterranean***, while the Eastern Mediterranean*** has been less robust.

Drewry said that it is expected that the trade volume on the westbound route will be close to the level of 2016, and the container volume will increase by about 2-3%. The West Mediterranean*** will provide more support to the market than the East Mediterranean***, but container rates will continue to be under pressure from larger vessels.

In terms of capacity, the adjustments made by the reorganization of the new alliance will lead to an increase in the cabin traffic of the westbound route from May, and it is expected to reach the highest level since August last year. Subsequently, if these ships are close to 90% full, air carriers can expect to reap the benefits of seasonally higher demand in the coming months.