Industry Stakeholders Upbeat on Breakbulk Shippings Prospects

AAL Shipping industrys stakeholders predict that heavy lift breakbulk cargo movement ex Japan into Asia will grow over the next 18 months. Helping the mood of optimism about Japan’s project cargo exports voiced at AAL Japan’s one-year anniversary celebrations in Tokyo was news that local engineering companies are involved with energy projects coming online in Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Myanmar, as well as oil and gas developments in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, Singapore-based ocean transport operator AAL said. Beyond Asia too, upcoming energy projects are being targeted in Africa and oil & gas projects on the US West Coast and Middle East are raising confidence and drawing focus away from a slowing China trade. Japan’s position as the world’s third largest economy is very much by design. The engineering, industrial and commercial infrastructure and capabilities here are a leading example to the rest of the Asia and indeed many other markets around the world, Wolfgang Harms, Deputy Managing Director of AAL and head of its operations in Japan commented.
 
The local government is working hard to lift economic fortunes.  This is being shaped not just with monetary policy to boost trade & consumer spending to an inflation target of 2%, but through infrastructure developments, renewable energy reforms and the building of stronger trade outside Asia – a policy which helped exports rise in the last quarter of 2015, after a sustained period of decline.