Import data stumbles to begin 2015, says Panjiva

United States-bound waterborne shipments stumbled to begin 2015, according to data recently issued by Panjiva, an online search engine with detailed information on global suppliers and manufacturers.

Total January shipments––at 794,950––were down 10 percent compared to December’s 887,850 and down 12 percent compared to January 2014’s 899,113. Panjiva said that this marks the worst start to a new year since it began tracking this data in 2007. And it added that the 10 percent December to January decline pales compared to the 7 percent gain a year ago, with a 1 percent decline two years ago and 10 percent and eight percent gain, respectively, over the previous two years.

This month’s data marks a change in Panjiva’s methodology in order to avoid “double counting,” with shipment data now incorporating house and simple bills of lading, which, in turn, translates into current numbers not matching up with past ones. Going forward, this data will exclude master bills of lading used by shipping companies themselves and results in what Panjiva CEO Josh Green called double counting and better represents the data on a comparison basis.

“January in general is relatively slow, and this year we saw it was particularly slow, with the key drive appearing to be the trouble at West Coast ports,” said Green.

As reported in LM, the nine-month West Coast port labor dispute between the Pacific Maritime Association and the International Longshore & Warehouse Union recently reached a tentative agreement on a new five-year contract, but industry estimates suggest it will take several weeks to clear the current level of backlog at West Coast ports, which was driven in large part by that situation.

As for how February’s activity will look with the month nearly complete, Green said it will be interesting in that it will reflect some of the port backlog being cleared, which should be a positive for import numbers, but noted that the coming Chinese New Year could be a drag on numbers and also may not reflect what is in store for 2015 as they are directly tied to specific things happening within the month of February.

“As we head into the rest of 2015, we should see global trade reflecting the confidence of sourcing executives about what consumers will be doing and certainly as we headed to the end of 2014 we saw sourcing executives were feeling confident, with end of year retail numbers looking relatively good,” he said. “I think that provides some momentum early into 2015, but at the same time sourcing executives are not as confident about heading into 2015 as they were heading into 2014, which reflects disappointment about the 2014 holiday season. Given all the macroeconomic indicators like improving jobs numbers and the low price of oil, things felt very positive heading into the holiday season, and at the end of the day it was a fine holiday season but not an extraordinary one and that gave people a bit of pause heading into 2015.”

Green described the 2014 holiday season as a bit more nuanced than expected, with online shopping activity strong and traditional retailers not faring as well, resulting in a less than banner year over all.