2010 may be the year of the order book, but you can have too much of a good thing (i.e. too much order book, and too much talk about it). We are as guilty as anyone, so this week, we thought we would take a break and look at something completely different - how trade grew in 2009, and how it might grow in 2010.

Nose-diving Numbers

We have just closed the book on the 2009 trade figures, published in CRSL’s new World Fleet Monitor which will be launched on 10th February. A quick look at the commodity growth rates in 2009 shows what a tricky situation the industry had to cope with. The graph, which shows dry commodities at the top and liquid bulks lower down, makes grim reading. Seaborne trade declined by 4.5% from 8.1 billion tons to 7.8 billion terms, the biggest fall since 1984.

Some Trades Actually Grew

Let's start with the good news. Two trades increased. The iron ore trade, which finished the year at around 900 million tons, grew by an astonishing 7.9%. Astonishing because last year steel production slumped by 8%. As everyone knows, the cause was China which succeeded in increasing its ore imports by almost 40%. But it is hard to believe that this sort of growth can be repeated in 2010. The only other trade to increase was steam coal. This is a large trade, 585 mt last year, and it was up 1%, driven by the power industry and oil prices heading towards $100 a barrel.

Some Trades Declined

Two trades turned in spectacular collapses. Top was phosphate rock which slumped by 40% from 31 million tons to 19 million tons. Potash and manufactured fertilisers followed a similar trend as world farmers struggled with escalating fertilizer prices and cut back on application rates. Bauxite, the raw material for aluminium, was down 20%, responding to less house building in OECD economies. Overall, dry bulk trade fell 2.8% in 2009.

Container Crash

Containerised cargo slumped 9% from 1.3 billion tons in 2008 to 1.2 billion tons in 2009. The fleet only grew by 6.7%, but that still left the container market struggling with a fat supply-demand gap.

Crude Crunch

The oil trade fell more than dry bulk, with the volume down 3.8% to 2.6 billion tons in 2009. This explains the weak tanker market in the second half of the year. In fact crude and products trades grew at about the same rate, which is puzzling because products tankers had a much bumpier ride. Finally the gas trades did no better than anyone else, with LNG down by 2.0% and LPG by 3.1%.

No Worse Than Expected

So there you have it. The biggest trade slump for years, but no surprise in a year when industrial output fell 3%. But luckily what goes down comes up and it looks as if most 2009’s lost ground will be clawed back in 2010. Have a nice day.