Dimerco Express Group (中菲行國際物流), which offers global freight-forwarding and logistics services, expects business to show strong seasonal growth next quarter, on the back of rising shipping demand from newly launched mobile phones and electronics.
Although the difference between the high season and the low season has narrowed in the past two or three years, Lin hopes strong seasonal demand in the fourth quarter will come back this year and drive up business for the whole of the year.
Following the global economic recovery this year, the company has seen business in both aviation and ocean cargo sectors improve from last year, with freight rates of aviation cargo to show growth of about 20 percent.
However, the global exchange rate fluctuation and the recent labor disputes on the coast of the Philippines may be the two major uncertainties for the group’s business in the fourth quarter, a Dimerco Express official said.
Dimerco Express saw consolidated sales in the first eight months of the year total NT$1.05 billion (US$34.5 million), up 16.2 percent from a year earlier, the company said in its stock exchange filing.
In the long term, the company aims to raise sales proportion of its ocean shipping business to 50 percent, from between 30 percent and 40 percent currently, through steady demand.
Compared with ocean cargo business, shipping demand in the aviation cargo sector may show higher uncertainty in the long run, as electronics products — the major products shipped by aviation — have been lighter and lighter, leading airlines to have difficulty in being fully loaded, Lin added.
EVA Airways Corp (EVA, 長榮航空) chairman Chang Kuo-wei (張國煒) expressed similar views to the media last year, expecting that the aviation cargo sector would find it difficult to rebound to the high levels recorded in 2010.
The bearish view caused the nation’s second-largest airline to plan a disposal of some of its freighters, aimed at reducing the number of cargo fleet to just 10 over the next two years.
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