Bottlenecks may hinder Asia box growth.

(From Lloyds List)

Byline: Summit told that infrastructure is failing to keep pace with increasing containership volumes, writes Keith Wallis in Hong Kong

INTRA-Asian box traffic will remain robust as China and countries in southeast Asia continue to trade with each other and the rest of the world, but more needs to be spent globally on infrastructure to reduce bottlenecks in the supply chain, a conference was told.

Speaking at the Container Summit 2006 organised by IBC Asia, Regional Container Lines executive director Hartwig Schulze-Eckardt said trade within Asia would continue to grow as the region developed.

But the senior official at Thailand's leading liner shipping company said Asian carriers needed to co-operate to survive. He pointed out that within Asia, Japan was the largest trading partner until the end of 2004 when it was overtaken by China.

He believed 650,000 teu would be lifted this year from Japan compared with 800,000 teu from China.

Emirates Shipping Line operations vice-president Khawar Ahmad pointed out that the volume of intra-Asian trade was about 36m teu this year, larger than Asia to Europe and US trade routes combined. He believed it was also the fastest growing region.