Copenhagen (Reuters) – Maersk, a shipping company, said on Wednesday that it expects global demand for containers to grow less quickly in 2022. This comes after the company moved fewer containers by sea in the second quarter due to a drop in consumer confidence and traffic jams at ports.
In a statement, CEO Soren Skou said in a statement, “Volumes in ocean shipping were lower as congestion continued and the war in Ukraine hurt consumer confidence, especially in Europe.”
Maersk, which is seen as a measure of global trade, said that the number of containers it put on ships in the second quarter was 7.4% lower than at the same time last year.
The company, which has a market share of about 17% and is one of the largest container shippers in the world, changed its forecast for global container demand to the lower end of its range of -1% to +10%.
The Copenhagen-based company confirmed on Tuesday that its second-quarter numbers were better than expected. On the same day, it also raised its profit forecast for 2022 because freight rates are staying higher than expected because of crowded global supply chains.
“In Europe, there was still a lot of congestion in the supply chain because retailers and manufacturers kept containers in ports and warehouses because there was not enough demand from customers,” the company said.
This is similar to the situation in the United States, where the biggest warehouse market is already full and major retailers warn that sales of clothes, electronics, furniture, and other goods will slow down.
Maersk said that delivery times were still long on the supply side.
“It is still unclear when capacity constraints, such as bottlenecks in trucking and storage, will ease,” the report said.
Even though congestion kept freight rates high overall in the second quarter, Maersk said that short-term and spot rates went down compared to the first three months of the year.
