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Will interstate sea-trade 'eclipse' road freight?
Interstate sea-freight through Fremantle reached a 30-year peak in 2003 - and the continued growth shows no sign of ending, according to latest assessments from the Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics.
In fact on projected figures the bureau is predicting that by 2020, sea's share of the interstate trade to WA will outstrip that carried by road.
Current bureau figures on the modal split for Eastern State-Perth traffic are:
| Road | Rail | Sea |
|---|---|---|
| 1003 kilotonnes | 2433 kilotonnes | 752 kilotonnes |
The bureau's projected figures for 2020 are:
| Road | Rail | Sea |
|---|---|---|
| 1707 kilotonnes | 4139 kilotonnes | 1718 kilotonnes |
It is not clear whether the bureau is factoring in its earlier predictions that the next ten years could see substantial changes in sea traffic through Fremantle if international shipowners accelerate a switch from 20-foot to 40-foot containers.
Under that scenario, much larger containerships would come into service on Australia's overseas trades and Sydney, Brisbane and Fremantle would become the country's main international ports. Consequently WA could see a significant boost in interstate freight traffic bound for export with Fremantle becoming a consolidation point.
Meanwhile Lloyd's Register, the London-based ship classification and consultancy group, has just provided an indication of the latest international trend towards much larger containerships.
In an article in its publication, "Horizons", Lloyd's reports that the current "dramatic recovery" of the containership market is "confounding even the most optimistic predictions".
Moreover shipowners have started to invest heavily in the construction of larger containerships.
Today there are more than 100 super-containerships under construction with a capacity of 8000 teu (teu = "twenty-foot equivalents units", which means in theory the same ships could carry 4000 40-foot containers.)
At the same time one shipowner has placed an order for a 9000 teu vessel and Lloyd's predicts the first 12,500 teu containership will be taking to sea before the end of the decade.
What is not happening at the moment is the construction of all the feeder-containerships that will be needed to help consolidated freight into the few main ports that will handle the super-containerships.
Lloyd's is calculating that some 2400 feeder-containerships are going to be needed around the world by 2010.
Some are already in existence, but there is still a shipbuilding boom waiting to happen for an estimated 1570 feeder-containerships that have yet to be constructed.
Lloyd's is not specific on which international trades the change is likely to happen to first.
