Abstract
The correlation between container trade and economic growth is currently the most common relation used to forecast international trade container demand volumes. The article argues that there is a ceiling level in the propensity to containerise, as all the suitable volumes of the underlying commodities shift to containers over time. Also, the link between freight transport and gross domestic product (GDP) will decouple as more sustainable approaches to economic development and freight transport are necessitated by economic and environmental realities. A commodity-based model, that takes the underlying drivers of containerisation into account, is proposed as a more realistic forecast of container demand. Applying this model could materially influence large-scale investment decision making.
Subject
General Business, Management and Accounting
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