How have the volumes of ocean shipping containers changed over time?

A just released report from the UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) organization looks at a ide variety of issue related to global ocean shipping.

The headline news: global maritime trade increased 2.4% to 12.3 billion tons in 2023. The agency also forecast growth of 2% in 2024 and average gains of 2.4% a year through 2029 for all types of ocean shipping.

The interesting report also featured the chart below, which tracks just ocean container shipping volumes by TEU per year, and the year-over-year change in those volumes:

Source: UNCTAD

As can be seen, volumes rose steadily through 2018, which led to five years of basically flat numbers, no doubt impacted in part by the COVID pandemic.

But regardless, the heady days of frequent double-digit annual growth seen before 2010 are long gone.

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