Asia Shipping grows in full container maritime imports

The dry spells in Northern Brazil and in the Panama Canal, coupled with floods down south and geopolitical issues—such as conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and, more recently, Israel and Hamas—made 2023 a challenging year for Brazilian foreign trade. Despite the difficulties, Asia Shipping experienced nearly a fourfold growth in maritime full container imports compared to the overall market.

“While the market grew by 6.10%, we achieved a rate of 22.42%, driven by the performance of some industries, such as electronics, which had been somewhat stagnant in 2022. The performance of Asia Shipping was also influenced by investment in new technologies to ensure greater agility, efficiency, and security in our clients’ logistical processes,” emphasizes Rafael Dantas, Sales Director at Asia Shipping.

Recently, the company announced version 2.0 of AS Tracking, a system that provides full digital access to invoices and tax documents, along with tracking shipments on a comprehensive and intuitive platform. “With AS Tracking 2.0, clients can check outstanding amounts and the CE Mercante number. The big news is that all information is available online, directly from the data entered at the source. In the reporting area, it’s possible to have an overview of operations and create and export custom documents. The tool is already operational for products such as maritime and air import and export,” explains Alexandre Pimenta, CEO of Asia Shipping.

Over the past five years, the Brazilian multinational has been investing in its digital transformation to enhance the customer experience. For the next year, Asia Shipping will accelerate technological integration—via APIs—of various platforms with the aim of offering increasingly differentiated and tailored products for importers and exporters.

“Throughout this year, we increased our productivity by 20% using new technological solutions—APIs and Artificial Intelligence. For 2024, we will have innovations that will position Asia Shipping at a new technological level. Something completely different from what the Foreign Trade market is accustomed to using in its operations,” predicts Rafael Dantas.

The executive is also optimistic about the industry’s performance next year, especially in Latin America, where there will be an increase in the capacity offered to meet full container demands. According to Dantas, Asia Shipping’s goal is always to grow at least twice as much as the market. To achieve this goal, he believes some sectors will be crucial: white goods, photovoltaic panels (solar energy), and automotive. Just this year, Asia Shipping transported 40,000 vehicles.

In the second half of this year, some manufacturers began replacing the transportation of automobiles on “Ro-Ro” ships with container shipments, offering periodic departures with shorter transit times, greater security (only two cars per container), and end-to-end quality. “For a major client in the automotive sector, we transported around 2,000 cars from China to Brazil in containers in recent months. The trend is for this volume to increase with new releases and the long-awaited economic growth resumption in 2024,” adds Dantas.

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