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Australia Freight Transport Report Q3 2007Product Type: Market Research ReportPublished by: Business Monitor International Published: August 2007 Product Code: R302-1471 Description The Australian freight industry continues to face strategic re-positioning. Most of 2006 was dominated byToll Holdings’ long battle to acquire its rival Patrick Corporation. In 2007, the takeover victors are now restructuring around two main units, Toll and the newly-created Asciano, which groups rail and port holdings. Toll is now seeking to build up a strong regional position in Asia, having also acquired Singapore-based SembCorp Logistics and Sembawang Kimtrans. Meanwhile, another long-drawn out battle, by Macquarie Bank and Texas Pacific Group (TPG) of the US to take over Qantas, the country’s largest airline, has failed. This result was a blow to Qantas management, which had enthusiastically backed the bid. Nevertheless, pressure will remain on the board to develop the company’s strategy aggressively, as competition looks set to intensify. BMI’s newly-released Australia Freight Transport Report concludes that these developments will be positive for the domestic industry in the long term. Toll’s new economies of scale and international ambition will be a plus factor. BMI believes that this new alignment, together with a new round of competition in airfreight, will support our forecast that freight carried, measured by million tonne-km (mntkm), across all modes will grow by an annual average of 4.8% between 2007 and 2011. With jet fuel prices now at more reasonable levels, we expect airfreight traffic growth of 6.9% per annum over the next five years. Rail freight will grow vigorously, rising by 5.3% per annum, on the back of strong mining exports and infrastructure development. Road haulage freight will achieve average annual growth of 4.2%, with strong demand held back by capacity limits. New motorway investment will not be enough to keep ahead of demand. Our shipping freight forecast, boosted by commodity exports, is now set for average annual growth of 4.8% in the forecast period. These rates of growth are impressive for an OECD economy. It is important to underline that freight growth will outstrip GDP expansion, a relatively unusual state of affairs for more developed economies. Part of Australia’s attraction as a transport market is this combination of significant growth potential with a strong and stable operating environment. BMI gives the Australian freight industry operating environment a score of 50 out of a theoretical maximum of 70. This is significantly above the Asia Pacific average of 44.5. Our conclusion is that Australia can look forward to a particularly vibrant freight industry over the next decade, with diversified growth across all modes, and with the overall value of transport and communications growing to US$51.65bn by 2011, representing 5.7% of total GDP (up from around 5.5% now). Table of Contents
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