Air cargo volumes grew 11.8 per cent in July despite the world’s air cargo engine, China, slowing to single digit growth, WorldACD reports.

The results were caused by above average growth from Europe at 14.2 per cent, Middle East & South Asia (MESA) at 13.5 per cent and Asia Pacific at 13 per cent, while the southern hemisphere “did rather poorly” in South America and Africa at 3.6 per cent and 2.6 per cent respectively.

As destinations MESA and Asia Pacific were the fastest growing areas at 14.9 per cent and 13.3 per cent respectively.

General cargo increased at 12.6 per cent and pharmaceuticals by 17.6 per cent.

The main surprise in July was July, with WorldACD commenting: “For the first time this year, the world’s air cargo engine sputtered a bit (relatively speaking, that is). The origin China saw double-digit growth for every month (averaging 19%), but not for July (8%). It grew faster than the world market every month, but not in July.”

It says air cargo needed the compensation of high growth from places like Hong Kong, Germany, India, the UK, Singapore and the Netherlands to achieve the 11.8 per cent growth, though incoming traffic to China continued to boom at 21 per cent.

Yields in July saw an increase of 7.8 per cent in US dollars, with Asia Pacific benefitting the most, up 13.2 per cent.

They did not increase month-on-month, with Euros losing 2.3 per cent while US dollars were stable.

In North America yields remained good as a destination to send goods to, whilst incoming volume remained the same as in June, US dollar yields for business to the region were slightly better month-on-month but increased 15.6 per cent year-on-year.