Danske Bank regularly publishes a Freight Forwarding Index, which reports the results of a survey of freight forwarders. Volumes of freight seems to be contracting in July and August, compared with the previous two months, and the air sector is suffering the worst from this.
Freight forwarders in Europe are expecting a slight increase in the volume of goods in the coming months, although the trends indicated by the Index seem to contradict this. For sea freight, the index is unchanged compared with volumes in June.
The Benelux region continued to experience particularly weak demand, while Eastern Europe and Germany also saw declines in demand. In contrast, UK and Swiss forwarders saw volumes improve in August, but expectations for the UK forwarding market fell, while Switzerland expects more optimistic developments.