The world’s largest container leasing firms are gearing up for a strong 2010 after seeing a sustained recovery in the final quarter of last year.

US-based TAL International, which revealed that its profitability fell by 40% in 2009 compared to the year before, said that it was recovering from the effects of the recession as last year’s peak season extended beyond the normal period. TAL president and chief executive Brian Sondey said: “Leasing demand for dry containers, our largest product line, typically slows in the fourth quarter as the summer peak season fades, but leasing demand improved throughout the fourth quarter of 2009.

“Our customers have indicated that trade volumes have been stronger than expected since the middle of 2009, and many needed to add container capacity back into their fleets after aggressively returning containers in the first half of the year.”

While higher trade volumes were leading to increased demand for boxes, Mr Sondey added that at the same time the supply of containers was stagnant, “New dry container procurement by shipping lines and leasing companies was practically nil from the Fall of 2008 to the end of 2009. “Even in this first year of negative container volume growth, the container supply and demand balance of oversupply changed to a shortage within 12 months.”

Textainer, the world’s largest box lessor with a fleet of over 2.2m teu, estimated that the global container fleet shrunk by 4% in 2009, and said that the overall production capacity this year was 600,000 teu-1m teu, compared to 3m teu in 2008.

Textainer has 33,000 teu on order, and TAL 70,000 teu. Both companies are seeing utilisation rates of their containers of over 90%, a figure that did not surprise one industry veteran, who said “The leasing industry has always done particularly well out of three things: strikes, disasters and recessions.”

Source: Lloyds List, March 2010