Asia will continue to drive the growth of the international air freight market over the nextfour years, according to the latest short-term forecast from IATA.
By 2014 international aviation will handle 38 million tonnes of air cargo, up 12.5 milliontonnes from the 26 million tonnes carried in 2009, the international airline association said inits ‘industry consensus forecast’ released this week. International freight volumes are expected togrow at a CAGR of 8.2% over the forecast period.
Excluding the impact of the rapid post recession rebound in 2010, for the 2011-2014 period, theconsensus view for air freight is that it will stabilise at 5% CAGR. This is slightly belowthe forecast growth in world trade (6%) suggesting a still conservative outlook after the recessionshock and possibly some loss of market share to sea shipping, IATA commented.
By 2014, the largest international freight markets will be the US (8.8 million tonnes), HongKong (5.4 million tonnes), Germany (4.4 million tonnes), Japan (4.4 million tonnes) and China (3.8million tonnes), the association predicted.
Asia Pacific will see the highest regional growth rate for international freight at 9.8% withHong Kong, Japan, China, South Korea, and Chinese Taipei comprising the region’s top five markets.The four fastest growing international freight markets over 2009-2014 are all in Asia: Hong Kong(12.3%), China (11.7%), Vietnam (11.4%) and Chinese Taipei (11.3%). The volume growth expected inChina and Hong Kong alone will account for a third of global volume growth over the period to 2014,IATA pointed out.
The Middle East will continue its recent strong growth with an expected 8.1% rise ininternational freight demand as freight links to and via the region continue to develop. TheUAE will lead the region, handling 2.7 million tonnes of cargo.
North America is expected to show 7.6% growth for international freight. The US isexpected to remain the largest international freight market by some margin, IATA said.
International freight demand for Europe will grow 6.5%, with Germany, the UK and the Netherlandsleading the region in size. The Russian Federation will see the fastest growth rate of 11%,however, according to IATA.
In Latin America international freight demand will increase 6.4%, with Peru leading the region’sfreight growth at 9%. Africa is expected to grow by 5.8%, the lowest rate among the regions.
“The focus of the industry continues to shift eastward. By 2014, 1 billion people will travel byair in Asia Pacific. That’s 30% of the global total and a 4 percentage point increase from the 26%it represented in 2009. The same is true for cargo where Asia Pacific will account for 28% ofglobal volumes,” said Giovanni Bisignani, IATA’s Director General and CEO, at a media briefing inSingapore.
In the passenger sector, which is significant for cargo as about 50% of freight volumes fly onpassenger planes, international passenger numbers are expected to rise by 5.9% a year from 952million in 2009 to 1.3 billion passengers in 2014.
The fastest growing markets for international passenger traffic will be China (10.8%), theUnited Arab Emirates (10.2%), Vietnam (10.2%), Malaysia (10.1%) and Sri Lanka (9.5%). By 2014, thetop five countries for international travel measured by number of passengers will be the USA, theUK, Germany, Spain and France.
