The Meteorological Agency reported that Yellow Sand (Asian Dust) had been observed from Kyushu to Hokkaido, the morning of May 7, the last Sunday of the Golden Week. It was the first time this year to have observed it in the east district from Tokai and Hokuriku. In Saturday morning on May 6 I was taken off my pajamas by force by my wife when I got up because she wanted to finish washing before Yellow Sand (Asian Dust) came the following day. Yellow Sand (Asia Dust) may be surely a cause of worry to housewife for this time. I remember that I had a hard time to wash my car parked outside covering with brown sand dust all over my car several years ago.
However, I feel tenderly of Yellow Sand (Asian Dust) when I think that this brown sand come over on the prevailing westerly winds (Jet stream) of an altitude of 10,000m at distance of approximately 6,000km from the Gobi, the Taklamakan desert as some high school boys who played an exciting baseball game in Koshien Stadium took sand of Koshien home in memory with them. However, Yellow Sand (Asian Dust) is a problem related to agricultural issue such as the expansion of pasturage and the cultivated land and creating the issue of environment and global warming. In addition, I could not become sentimental when I think that PM2.5 comes over from China to Japan with Yellow Sand even if PM2.5 situation in China has been improved.
The world economy is a recovery basic tone. The employment statistics of April excluding the non-agriculture section in the United States shows 211,000 increase compared with the month before, unemployment rate is 4.4% at the low level of, approximately ten years. The preliminary figure of the GDP of the first-quarter of the euro area of this year is by 0.5% increase from the prior quarter and 1.8% growth of annual ratio conversion. The unit sales of new cars of Southeastern Asian main six countries are 316,736 by 14% increase compared with the previous fiscal year, 2 figures increase for 2 months on end. In China, power comes out to economy by overheat of the domestic investment caused by the capital regulation. There is the bubble concern, but the resources import such as iron ore increases and, as a result, it promotes the economic recovery of the resource-rich nation.
The world’s largest slot capacity 20,170TEU of MOL’s mega-containership, “MOL Triumph” went into service in April. However, the world’s largest slot capacity of mega-containership was established anew one month later by “Madrid Maersk “of 20,568TEU by Maersk Line. The world’s largest slot capacity of “Madrid Maersk “will be revised by “OOCL Hong Kong”, 21,394TEU put in service in May. The number of mega-containerships over 20,000TEU in operation will be expected 22 ships this year. Therefore it is still hard to deny the surplus feeling of the space so that the freight rate restoration of the shipping company seems to be still difficult. It is anticipated that the freight rate restoration will be largely improved depending on cargo movement any time as the number of the new containerships will be reduced in 2018 and 2019 gradually.
The liner department of Japanese 3 lines, NYK, MOL, K Line will be integrated into one and the new company will start from next April. The name of the new company is announced in July of this year. Its scale is that the capital of 30 million yen (38% for NYK, 31% for MOL, 31% for K Line) operating the fleet size of 1.4 million TEU which will become No. 6 largest shipping line with 7% of global share. We would like to expect them as a leader of world shipping company very much.
Confusion of regrouping of the Alliance member that began in April seems to have still affected empty positioning to the demand places among shipping lines. The price of the new container (water-based paint) in China has been settled down with $2,200 per 20f. A production of water-based paint system seems to have already been operated in earnest by Chinese container makers. The factory stock of the current new containers is beyond 600,000 TEU. The largest container leasing company in the world has already placed an order for the new containers close to 300,000TEU with Chinese container makers and they are providing for the future demand. It will make leasing companies different from now on how many speculative order of new containers they could place an order now. The most of the new containers are the speculative ordering of the leasing companies but, on the other hand, ordering of the shipping company would occupy nearly 30% of total order. Container demand of this year would be predictable.