Dubai – Mubasher: DP World Limited on Tuesday posted a 6% growth in cargoes handled cargoes on a like-for-like basis, while gross container volumes rose 4.8% year-on-year during the same period.
The Dubai-based port operator handled 35.6 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) across its global portfolio during H1-18, it said in a statement.
In the UAE alone, DP World handled 7.7 million TEUs in the first six months of 2018, “broadly flat” with only a slight increase of 0.2% from data posted for the corresponding period of last year, the company said.
“The first half of 2018 continues to see an upswing in global trade and all three DP World regions delivered growth, particularly our terminals in Europe and Australia,” it highlighted.
At a consolidated level, DP World said its terminals handled 18.6 million TEUs in H1-18, registering a 4.0% improvement in performance on a reported basis and up 4.5% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis.
Commenting on DP World’s results, chairman and CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem said that his company’s portfolio enjoyed “encouraging performance” in the first half of 2018 with all regions delivering growth.
Despite that, Q2-18 witnessed some growth deceleration on the back of “tougher year-on-year comparables” where Q2-17 saw a year-on-year increase of 10.7% driven by market share gains from the new shipping alliances, he added.
Bin Sulayem further noted that DP World’s investments will continue to deliver positive results in the second half of 2018.
“While geopolitical issues and changes in trade policies continue to pose uncertainty to the container market, [the] H1-18 volume performance demonstrates that our portfolio is well positioned to deliver growth,” bin Sulayem concluded.
