The world's largest container manufacturer, China International Marine Containers (Group) Co., Ltd. (referred to as CIMC), recently released its third quarter 2024 performance report.

In the third quarter, CIMC Group achieved a revenue of 49.856 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44.3%; The net profit attributable to the parent company was 962 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 891.8%. In addition, in the first three quarters, CIMC Group achieved a revenue of 128.971 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35.6%; The net profit attributable to the parent company was 1.828 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 268.9%.

In the container manufacturing business sector, the production and sales volume of containers increased significantly year-on-year in the first three quarters, with a cumulative sales volume of 2.4863 million TEUs for dry containers, a significant increase of 421.8% year-on-year. In addition, the cumulative sales of refrigerated containers reached 93400 TEUs, a year-on-year increase of 16.6%.

Regarding the growth of container business performance, CIMC Group stated that the container volume exceeded expectations in 2024, primarily driven by strong transportation demand.

In the first three quarters of 2024, global container trade demand rebounded. According to Clarkson's forecast data released in September 2024, the global container trade volume growth rate will significantly increase from 0.7% in 2023 to 5.2% in 2024, and is expected to continue growing by 2.8% in 2025.

In addition, since 2024, in the context of sustained international trade growth, customers have shown a strong willingness to prepare containers in response to the risk of container shortages caused by the prolonged Red Sea crisis, port strikes, and other uncertain events.
CIMC Group expects that the global economy will gradually stabilize in the future, and the overall trade environment will improve. Despite still facing risks and challenges, the expected trend of sustained growth in trade volume remains unchanged. Currently, CIMC's container orders are relatively saturated, with orders in hand scheduled until December, overall better than the same period last year.

For the medium to long term outlook of container manufacturing business, CIMC Group believes that against the backdrop of sustained increase in international commodity trade volume, the global container inventory is expected to continue to rise. In the medium to long term, factors such as trade growth, supply chain diversification, and increased container transportation mileage will work together to generate necessary new demand. Meanwhile, the uneven flow of container trade and the replacement of aging containers will also support the growth of container demand.