Westports disclosed in a filing to the Malaysian stock exchange that its throughput for April and May had been "lower than originally expected - at 1.55 million TEU.
After reporting a one per cent year-on-year increase in volume for the first three months at 2.4 million TEU, Westports said in its quarterly financial report that it was targeting "similar container throughput as that achieved in 2016", reported London's Loadstar.
Container volumes at Westports rose 10 per cent in 2016 to 9.95 million TEU driven by growth from its major customers, CMA CGM and UASC.
Said Westports: "We had originally expected to grow our volume this quarter due to increased amounts of transitional moves or ad-hoc calls as a result of the changes in shipping alliances. However, these did not materialise as planned due to the fact that competition for these volumes was intense."
More importantly, Westports described the 12 services in the restructured Ocean and THE alliance networks that will be calling at its facilities as "more eastbound-focused than westbound" and will thus call at Port Klang "only on the backhaul segment of their voyage" and those ships are expected to carry far more empties.
Therefore, it said, "with the more moderate container throughput", it now expected the container volume for the year to be "lower than the previous year by a single-digit percentage".
After reporting a one per cent year-on-year increase in volume for the first three months at 2.4 million TEU, Westports said in its quarterly financial report that it was targeting "similar container throughput as that achieved in 2016", reported London's Loadstar.
Container volumes at Westports rose 10 per cent in 2016 to 9.95 million TEU driven by growth from its major customers, CMA CGM and UASC.
Said Westports: "We had originally expected to grow our volume this quarter due to increased amounts of transitional moves or ad-hoc calls as a result of the changes in shipping alliances. However, these did not materialise as planned due to the fact that competition for these volumes was intense."
More importantly, Westports described the 12 services in the restructured Ocean and THE alliance networks that will be calling at its facilities as "more eastbound-focused than westbound" and will thus call at Port Klang "only on the backhaul segment of their voyage" and those ships are expected to carry far more empties.
Therefore, it said, "with the more moderate container throughput", it now expected the container volume for the year to be "lower than the previous year by a single-digit percentage".