Africa-Europe volumes on the up, but forwarders are not happy

Trade flows between Africa and Europe are on the up, especially containerised goods, but SME forwarders are yet to experience the benefit, leaving questions on just how shippers are booking their cargo.

Container Trades Statistics (CTS) data, which reports two months in arrears, shows that, following disastrous January Europe-Sub-Saharan Africa volumes dropping more than 10% year on year, the route has seen back-to-back months of growth.

But despite CTS recording a 17.9% year-on-year upswing in May volumes, forwarders told The Loadstar they had yet to see much in the way of growth, one describing their situation as a “status quo” in which “hardly anything was happening”.

That 17.9% May uptick was preceded by upswings of 6.7%, 8.8%, and 6.1%, year on year, with April and May rate data showing a similarly strong momentum, climbing 10.9% and 12.5%, respectively.

Similarly, on Sub-Saharan Africa-Europe routings, volume growth has returned after a March blip (down 1.9% year on year) coinciding with the onset of war in the Persian Gulf, with volumes up 10.8% in May and 4.6% in April.

Again, however, forwarders The Loadstar spoke to appeared largely ambivalent over the way the April and May had played out on Europe-bound African exports, one noting that part of the problem was that their attention had been “tied up on other trades”.

“There is a lot of potential sitting around for Middle East-Africa trade, but we cannot do much to move cargo, with everything is getting stuck in India on FCL and LCL volumes not being accepted,” said one forwarder.

Reasons behind the split between the data and the experience of forwarders are hard to pin down, one possibility being that the forwarders The Loadstar has spoken to are simply less engaged in the Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe trades.

Another possibility is that shippers are either favouring the multinationals (the forwarders The Loadstar spoke with are SMEs) or that, as on other trades, notably Asia-Europe, shippers are sidestepping forwarders to book direct with carriers.

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