Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Lodestar Podcast. I'm your host, Charlotte Goldstone.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: We are officially halfway through the year,
[00:00:23] Speaker A: well over halfway through the year now, and it has been an extremely eventful few months.
So today we are going to be checking back in with the CEO of Container Trade Statistics, Nigel Pusey, to examine what the H1 numbers tell us about how external factors have influenced the market. Now, for anyone who doesn't know, CTS is the most comprehensive data set on the market for global container shipping volumes and pricing. Its data is comprised of 75% contributed member data from the shipping lines themselves and and market driven estimates for the remaining 25%. They also release monthly reports that really do contextualize the stories that we report on and the external factors in the market.
[00:01:06] Speaker B: So a bit later on in the episode we are going to be joined
[00:01:09] Speaker A: by the Lodestars managing editor, Gavin Van Marle to help give us some further details about what he's been reporting on and how the numbers reflect this. Then the three of us are going to be dissecting and analyzing the biggest shifts in volumes, pricing and trade lanes over the past six months. Plus, I'm going to be putting Gavin and Nigel's past predictions to the test from the Q1 podcast that we recorded a few months ago. So without further ado, let's get into the episode.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Lodestar podcast. Nigel, it's great to have you here again.
[00:01:41] Speaker C: It's fantastic to be back. Charlotte. I think this is our anniversary of our first one, so.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: Oh wow. Wow.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: Gosh time did. We did a half year, so. Yeah. So really looking forward to it. It's an exciting first six months, so lots going on.
[00:01:54] Speaker B: Yes, a lot has changed. But before we dive into the dynamics and factors that shaped pricing and volumes in the first half of this year, I think it'd be useful to get an overview of what happened with some quick fire questions based on CTS data.
So first of all, what was the total volume demand growth globally in the first half of the year? As as a quick reminder to our listeners in Q1 when we last spoke, this was up 4.4% from the first quarter of 2025.
[00:02:20] Speaker C: So first half is 98.4 million up 5.2% and Q2 was 5% up. So it's basically a continuing growth into Q2, so pretty high numbers.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: And overall, did moving freight globally get
[00:02:35] Speaker C: more expensive or less seriously More expensive?
Up 30 points from around 38% from January to June.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: I think you can see that in Some of the carriers re recalculated profit forecast. So which trade saw the overall highest volume for Q1 this year was Intra Asia, up a huge 7% from the first quarter of 2025.
[00:02:58] Speaker C: And Intra Asia still driving fast ahead of everyone else. It is now almost twice the size of the next biggest trade. It's 26 million for the first half, up 8.7% year to date. So another push for the second quarter.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: Well, I mean, obviously volume alone doesn't tell the full story. So which trade recorded most growth in both rates and volume?
[00:03:20] Speaker C: So the biggest growth in volumes was Asia, Sub Saharan Africa, particularly West and east, up 27% in the first half. And in terms of rates, the biggest jump was slightly surprisingly, India and Middle east out to Asia, which is up nearly 270%. It's closely followed by Asia out to India and Middle east, which is up 100% since June. So that they're the big ones. Absolutely.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: On the flip side of this, which trade saw the biggest decline in rates and volume?
[00:03:50] Speaker C: So there are a few smaller ones that had bigger percentages. But in terms of really meaty sized trades, the biggest drop is Europe to India. Middle east, which is down 11% year to date, so quite a big drop. Particularly Europe to the Middle east has some pretty dramatic falls.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Obviously these numbers give us kind of a very simple idea of what moved where. But to help remind us what influenced those movements, we're going to be taking more of a deep dive into the individual trades and the external factors that impacted them. And of course, we can't discuss the ocean freight dynamics without the lodestar Managing editor, Gavin Van Maal. Hello, Gav.
[00:04:25] Speaker D: Hello, Charlotte. Hello, Nigel.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: First, I want to zoom into one of the largest stories of the first half of the year and that is, of course, the huge number of exports from Far East Asia. The Far east region's Exports have risen 8.9% over the first six months of 2026. That's CTS data. That's obviously a huge jump from the already huge export figures that they were showing at the start of the year. And I think there are a few stories within this that we should explore. But first of all, let's look at the Trans Pacific as. I mean, this is a market that's had quite a turbulent time recently, especially with the Far east imports, obviously due to the tariffs. So am I right in saying that we're starting to see a slight recovery of North American imports from Far East Asia? I mean, how much of this Far east export boom is going to North America.
[00:05:11] Speaker C: So it's Quite interesting because Q1 Far East Transpac volumes were down 3% and they recovered. And this is where you talk about the boom, certainly Q2, up 11%. So that's the first time we've seen that growth in Transpac in a quarter for at least six quarters now. Interestingly enough though, if you dig slightly deeper, it was all in April and May, cause June was pretty flat. So we've seen an April and May bounce significant slightly drop. But overall Q2 11. But when you drill down underneath that, what's probably more interesting, greater China to the US only, not Canada or Mexico, was down 12% in the first quarter, but up a massive 22% in the Q2. So that just shows you how whatever was going on, there was a big rush to get cargo out of China.
I've heard talk of a lot of restocking. It's been going on for over a year since all the talk of tariffs. It was inevitable. But what's fascinating is it's coming out of China and not so much out of the Southeast Asia. And sorry. And just to reflect that the PI is up 42% for the whole of North America for the first six months, just off the basis of those two boom months.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: And do either of you have an idea of what kind of drove that jump of imports from China? Was it the pause in IPA tariffs, do we think? Or the fact that they were ruled unlawful? Or do we think it's now that tariffs are just changing so much that everyone's given up with alternative sourcing and just thinks like, let's just stick to what we know.
[00:06:47] Speaker D: So there was. There's two couple of things. There is the inventory stuff, and you're absolutely right, Charlotte, that the IPA tariff deadline and the uncertainty as to what would replace that once that expired. So there was definitely, certainly US west coast forwarders that we speak to reported that that was one of the factors underlying the demand. The other one, which is quite easy to forget given where are we now? Mid August was the July 1st recalculation of the bunker adjustment factors that carriers are bringing in. And that had a big impact for contract shippers, which of course make up the majority, I believe, Nigel, anyway, the majority of shipments, commerce, rising fuel costs, all that sort of stuff. So. And then you have bunker adjustment factors which are traditionally calculated on a quarterly basis, that is at the end of every three months. And these were predicted to absolutely jump on July 1st. So there was a double thing there. There was both the inventory levels in the U.S.
there was also strong consumer spending in the U.S. in the first six months. So there was a sort of a replenishment factor. But then there was a push to bring in as much volume as could be done before overall freight costs shot up after July 1st.
[00:08:05] Speaker B: Nigel, you mentioned that the imports have started to see a bit of a plateau in June and July. So I wonder if they're going to, they're going to carry on growing. Obviously we've now got these looming 301 tariffs into the US. It's going to be interesting how that impacts everything.
[00:08:17] Speaker C: It's fascinating to see whether the June was just a plateau for a little bit rise and it's difficult to predict. I'm not, you know, I'm certainly feeling that we're going to get that plateau continuing in at least into the early part of Q3.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Just the dust, the crystal ball off.
[00:08:34] Speaker C: I think the other fascinating thing about this is that is Southeast Asia a permanent change or will they go back to China? And you can see as soon as an opening comes up, China's back in the race. You can see an awful lot of suppliers go, what if I can get to China? I'm probably going to get a better rate purchase than Southeast Asia. Sorry, Kev.
[00:08:55] Speaker D: It does also provide sort of counterfactual evidence that, that during the height of the sort of tariff frenzy, the Americans were very worried about a lot of China origin cargo being transshipped over sort of Southeast Asian locations.
And the speed with which those exports return to China would provide counterfactual evidence that there was indeed a whole load of transshipment going on. People basically masking the origin of cargo to avoid higher paying tariffs into the
[00:09:29] Speaker B: U.S. well, speaking of transshipment and alternative sourcing, quite a big part of the story with the China to US trade comes from the Intra Asia trade. And this is the largest trade and one that also saw a big knock on effect of all the tariff and, and geopolitical volatility seen well last year and in the first half of this year where alternative sourcing and China plus one strategies has meant that this trade saw steady growth. I mean we recently reported that mid July saw the easing of an early peak season on the Intra Asia trade signal by kind of a slight easing of freight rates and easing of congestion at major ports. On the whole, Nigel, how have you seen the importance of the Intra Asia trade change or grow in the first half of this year? I mean, how much of the Far east exports are going into other, other areas of Asia do you think?
[00:10:17] Speaker C: If you look at the Far east As a total interasia trade is 43% the total of that trade. So it's a huge part of everything they do. And then in reality, you know, we've seen that keep going slightly, perhaps less in Q2. But the reality is this is a trade unaffected by geopolitics, unaffected by you know, basically anything. And it just chugs along at this amazing growth rate.
And I think we're just going to see the importance of this trade become larger and larger. Now it's 25% of every box moved. Now it's interesting, you know, lots of people talk about TEU miles or kilometers or whatever and this clearly doesn't travel at the distances of some of the others. But from a box movement perspective, it's such a massive concentration.
[00:11:06] Speaker B: Gav, is this true with what you're hearing from forwarders or what you're noticing from kind of where carriers are deploying their capacity?
[00:11:13] Speaker D: Yeah, in general you're right, Charlotte. We definitely saw the peak season.
As far as you can tell it within trade you don't get such a sharp spike as you get on the other trades with it. But certainly in terms of spot rates and stuff, it peaked earlier and in fact there was a fairly strong correlation in terms of pricing that intra Asia peaks about a month earlier than Asia, Europe or the Trans Pacific. But again, it's a much softer peak than you get. So you know, the trade as is very stable capacity. Generally rates are stable. Apart from these odd things, big issue is is poor congestion.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Another big export market for the Far east is into Europe.
And gav, actually last time we recorded this podcast back in may for the Q1 data, we were talking about when the European peak season would be.
To which Nigel, you said, and I'm going to quote this exactly, you said, if I'm going to stick my neck out on anything, it's to say that there has to be an end to this import spree that is happening out of the Far east, which we've seen for the last 18 months. There has to be a dampening down. Has the peak season happened a little bit early this season because of the pulling forward of cargo? There is going to come an end to that and I think Q2 could start to see that. So what actually happened on the Far east exports to Europe in particular?
[00:12:31] Speaker C: It slightly depends. You know, data has this wonderful ability to tell two different stories simultaneously. So I'm going to tell the one that backs mine up.
[00:12:39] Speaker D: Of course.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Go for it.
[00:12:42] Speaker C: So Q1 we had a 15% increase year on year. But Q2 was actually only 10%. So in terms of relative to previous years, Q2 wasn't the big increase on previous years that we had, particularly in May and June, which was a lot damper than May. But.
And this is why it's two data sets have the same meaning, actually it was 10% up on Q1. If you just did Q2 to Q1. So there was an increase in cargo in Q2. Clearly we are still not seeing the dampening down. I've been trying to talk to people again, just try to understand, and I did get a sense that there was a lot of pulling forward into latter part of Q1, into early Q2.
You know, it's dampening, but it's not dampening to the level that you might expect.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: And so what is this telling us about when the peak season actually happened? Do we have. Do we have information?
It's kind of up and down, isn't it? That's what we were talking about last episode.
[00:13:46] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. I mean, if we're talking Asia, Europe and if we're talking in terms of spot rate pricing and so this is distinct from the CTS price index, then spot pricing peaked at sort of week 28, 29. So that's sort of mid July. And it's very similar onto the Trans Pacific thing. If I go back to sort of late April, early May, Hulmers is obviously still closed. They know they've got new BAFs coming up in sort of eight weeks time. There was a sense of panic, frankly, amongst a lot of European forwarders, or certainly the ones I spoke to, in terms of how they were going to get their shipments.
Yeah. The demand levels that they were seeing because people are so used to pulling forward shipments now, they've been doing it for two or three years that there's no shift in strategy for them. It's just put the orders in. There was also poor congestion. Again. There were considerable roll pools that built up in China in May and June.
Those appear to have been cleared by about the end of July. So the peak season as we would have known it traditionally ought to be.
[00:14:51] Speaker C: We.
[00:14:51] Speaker D: Well, we ought to be right in the thickness right now. And actually we waved goodbye to it a fortnight ago. I think that's the sense I've got.
[00:14:59] Speaker C: I think you're probably right. Yeah.
[00:15:00] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:15:01] Speaker C: What's fascinating though, is that, you know, I mean, are you. Are you sensing any tightening of capacity on boxes or things like that? Because that imbalance that we always talk about between Far Eastern Europe is up another 11%. Incredible. You know, and the number of boxes that you're needing to get.
[00:15:18] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:15:18] Speaker C: Imports out of China. I don't know. I, I wonder whether the box capacity and the supply of ships drove rates up.
[00:15:27] Speaker D: I haven't had reports of equipment availability.
Right. Certainly in terms of vessel capacity because everyone's still going around the Cape of Good Hope. They didn't take very much increase in overall demand to basically fill the capacity.
[00:15:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:40] Speaker D: And there isn't enough ships around to plug that or to increase. And it's also to do with the four week voyage time. You've just got these, these various sort of things coming together. So I mean when I, when I was talking to people during May and June and they were really worried about obtaining capacity and I was asking whether they thought this was capacity management on behalf of the carriers, they didn't see any of that. It was just simply a function of how much available capacity there is and whether that now that, you know, there seems to be in recent weeks increased use of the Red Sea in the Suez Canal, whether we might see some of that pressure on capacity being released over the next few months will be quite interesting to see if those transits even continue.
[00:16:23] Speaker B: We will, we will take a, take a look at the Red Sea later on in the episode. But before we do move on to that, which is obviously the next major topic, Nigel, are there any Far east export markets that I haven't mentioned that you think are significant?
[00:16:36] Speaker C: Two, Charlotte, always in the last year and a half I've been saying these two are continuing to grow and there's some pretty impressive figures. Asia to sub Saharan Africa, first half, 28% off the back of pretty much a close to 30% increase last year. First quarter up by 33%, second quarter 24%. West Africa and East Africa are booming container shipping wise at the moment. And then those two, Asia, Central South America is coming up close behind 16% up in the first half off the back of something not dissimilar for the previous year. Strength in both quarters, slightly less in Q2, 17 and 14, respectively. But you know, pretty decent returns. And these two seem to me are the ones that strangely have delivered the consistent growth that underpins that 5% that doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
[00:17:28] Speaker B: That's really interesting because it felt like kind of the catalyst for that growth was because of areas in Asia trying to find secondary markets once the tariffs came in in the us but now it seems like it's a continuing trend.
[00:17:39] Speaker D: Yeah, I was just reading just before coming on This, I was doing a bit of reading on this and this fascinating story about Brazilian paper imports from China and Indonesia. This is cut paper. It's like photocopy paper and all this. It's up 44% from import of paper into Brazil from China in January to May is up 44% year on year.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:00] Speaker D: But the Brazilian paper market is completely domestically self sufficient.
In fact, it's a net exporter. But because of the US tariffs on Chinese paper imports, they are now sending them into Brazil and the Chinese paper imports are something like 20% cheaper domestically produced Brazilian paper.
So this is like the shockwaves of the US tariffs that they take time to spread to really start affecting other markets. Because you've now got the Brazilian paper associations going to the Brazilian government and asking the Brazilian government to put tariffs on Chinese paper imports to protect their industry from an industry which has already been hit by the U. S. Tariffs a year ago.
[00:18:49] Speaker C: I think that, I think it's a classic example of what happens when you impose tariffs and people start to look for markets. And, and we talked this time last year about how China, in anticipation of tariffs, decided to go out and find new markets for its cargo. And it was absolutely clear to us that Sub Saharan Africa and South America east west coast were going to be their targets. And that has just continued. And I bet for each one of that story of paper, I bet there's some interesting examples.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Well, as well as Far east exports, a major defining factor for container markets in the first half of the year has of course been the conflict in the Middle east and the Hormuz closure alongside the ongoing Red Sea diversions. So last time we all recorded a podcast together, it was back in early May and we were looking at what had unfolded in the first quarter.
At that time we were kind of seeing the initial shock of the closure of Hummus show up in the data. I think it was like around a 62% decline in middle east exports that you had said at the time, and you mentioned yourself, this was an initial shock. And as time goes on, we're going to start to see that changing as people adapt and find different routes. And I think I read in one of your press releases that April was the first full month that we saw the full impact in the data. And I mean, Gav, last time we spoke you outlined some alternative ports, use of feeder services, land bridge options. And one thing we did speak about was how if we zoom into Saudi Arabia, the import numbers were being influenced by these alternative routings. I mean, there's Lots of knock on effects here. Nigel mentioned in Q1 imports had actually gone down 40% into Saudi Arabia. But you explained that there's kind of a limit to how quickly the shift can happen. And then you said that if we had spoken a few months, you'd likely see some quite dramatic changes in those numbers. So let's, let's zoom in here. Nigel, can you give us a quick overview of the total import and export numbers in the Middle east to see how the conflict is still impacting box movements and perhaps also if you did actually see a jump in the Saudi figures or anywhere else that caught your eye.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: Yeah. So in half year terms imports into Middle east are down around 950,000. So we're still continuing to see that, that reduction. In reality it has slowed because we're only now looking at a 28% decline in imports. That shows that cargo is finding its way in. We've said in June that it may be down to as little as somewhere between 5 and 10% when you compare it with sort of pre war levels. So clearly there's cargo coming in, when you look at the quarter is still quite a decline. But June is not getting back absolute to those levels. But we're certainly seeing some increases.
The export is slightly different. As I said earlier, the price indexes have gone through the roof on exports, particularly out of the Middle east. And we've seen a decline on Middle east exports of around again another 800,000 in that quarter. So it's quite significant decrease.
However, when we talk about Hormuz and above Hormuz, the decline is greater. So if you look at above Hormuz, you're looking at around 39% decline in imports and a 44% decline in exports. So those numbers are still struggling in May, June and I suspect because the tightening of Hormuz again happened after this event, we're going to see those coming back.
We talked about Saudi, of course, Adaman and Jabal, they've gone down 75% and what you're seeing, so both Jabal, Andaman, they've both collapsed by about the same amount over that period. King Abdullah had a bit of a jump, but funny enough that stopped and I think it's all gone to Jeddah.
And Jeddah is the one that can deal with this. It has the capacity, it has all of the infrastructure behind it. But the other one which is quite interesting is Aqaba in Jordan is up 46% on the last couple of months. So it's only started happening in May, June, but aqaba clearly, that suggests that people are coming down through Suez and coming into Aqaba. And the other one that we wanted to have a look at was Mersin.
There was a slight uptick. It's only 10% up call Q2 on Q1, but there clearly is cargo coming through there into some of the northern cities.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Obviously, when we spoke in May, no one was kind of really sure how long this conflict would last and whether it would escalate or end. And I think many people actually assumed that it would kind of be over by the second half of the year.
So do we think that people have kind of adapted to this being the new normal? Now, Gav, the alternative routings that you mentioned last time, have you had any more feedback on how well these are working or how Nigel just said that the numbers have transpired? Is that kind of reflective of what you've been hearing of the different routings that people have been using?
[00:23:42] Speaker D: Yeah. So with. With the Landbridge thing, I think what has sort of settled in is that you've got different, what they were called Gulf bypass ports for the different parts of that upper Gulf. So to sort of take it northwards down Mersin was being touted, particularly by msc, as a gateway for northern Iraq. As Nigel just mentioned there, you can. You can truck it from Mersin into northern Iraq.
Aqaba, obviously Jordan, but Aqaba for Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, all that kind of Middle Mesopotamia kind of thing.
[00:24:15] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:15] Speaker D: And then either Jeddah or crucially, and we didn't talk about this so much at the time because it was under missile attack, but you've got Corfican, which is in the uae, but it's outside of hormones.
And what. What initially happened was that everyone headed towards Jeddah and King Abdullah, and that really had a big impact on sort of trucking capacity and trucking rates and all that sort of stuff. What I've seen in the last three months is the real emergence of Corfican as a gateway to the uae. In particular, Go.
Before the war, right, Corficam was built as a transshipment thing. Corficam didn't actually even have any truck gates, Right.
It never expected to see trucks passing, so they built the truck gates. You've got trucks going up to Dubai and Abu Dhabi and from there they're being sort of loaded onto feeder ships up into the upper Gulf. So Corfican has had a tremendous growth and actually looks to like it's going to benefit hugely from this disruption. And I think a lot of the lower Gulf, UAE stuff is now being directed through Corfican, which in its own way has released some pressure on Jeddah.
[00:25:22] Speaker C: So just to back up that Corfican, 179% up half year. Wow.
[00:25:27] Speaker D: Yeah. And you can see that. You can see that from the shipping, from the amount of capacity going in there. Like pre war, it was, you know, a handful of vessels a month.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: I think doing these each quarter is really useful to kind of illustrate how quickly these things change. Gav, last episode we recorded, you said that you didn't think we would see a return to the Red Sea. Obviously, this is all going on as well as the closure of hormones. Nigel, you actually agreed with this. You said that you thought that Suez would be off again for at least another quarter, though. Gav, you did actually caveat this and say, unless it's for southbound transits now, we haven't seen a full return, but we are seeing carriers start to test the waters again. Even this week has seen more transits resume from some of the major carriers. Gav, do you have any kind of outline of what's happened with carrier services?
[00:26:12] Speaker D: I've been really surprised, I have to say. I thought that the sort of the way that the hostilities have kept reigniting like some persistent wildfire, you know, just when you think it's gone down, it comes up again. And then obviously, the way that it's started to spread to between the Houthis and the Saudis, I thought that would be an absolute death knell for any transfer services.
And I've been really surprised to see, see that in the midst of this, there's been new announcements, what was it, two or three days ago, that the Gemini Partners announced that another Asia Med service would be transiting to us. You know, after careful consultation of the security system, which on the face bit, looks. Looks as insecure as it has ever been.
[00:26:57] Speaker C: I agree.
[00:26:58] Speaker D: Yeah. So, I mean that there's obviously there's a motivation on the part of the carriers that they really need to deploy this capacity through Suez because otherwise there isn't enough elsewhere. I mean, that can be the only reason for using Suez is to release capacity.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: What we've been predicting for the last two years that as soon as it goes through Suez, prices will collapse, you know.
[00:27:22] Speaker B: Yeah. I'll be interested to see how that develops from. From next quarter.
Now, finally, to round off the episode, I'm gonna have to ask you both for some further predictions so that we can laugh at them next time we speak.
So, Gav, I'll start with you. We what is your prediction and if you could give a reason for this?
[00:27:42] Speaker D: Okay, so this is for the next quarter, right? That we're doing this. Yeah. So I think we're going to see the beginnings of the impact of El Nino. We're already starting to see transit restrictions at the Panama Canal. You're already starting to see some carriers introduce Panama Canal surcharge fees. And if the last El Nino is any guide, then this will last for about 12 months. But I think it will start to kick in in the next quarter and that's going to have quite an impact on the Asia, North America east coast trade, which is at the moment still showing strong growth in terms of spot rates.
So that's, that's number one.
[00:28:25] Speaker B: Oh, you're doing more than one?
[00:28:26] Speaker D: I'm going to do, I'm going to ask, oh, how brave I am doing a second one. But I think this is such a dead set. But you know, but I think that the CTS price index is going to remain elevated over the next quarter and that's simply due to the higher bunker adjustment factors that shippers are having to pay due to Hormuz fuel costs.
[00:28:47] Speaker B: Nigel, what about you? What are your predictions?
[00:28:49] Speaker C: Well, I'm also going slightly safe. I wouldn't be surprised that South America starts to get to the growth out of Asia that sub Saharan Africa's had off the back of some of the stuff we've been talking about services being reorganized. Interestingly, to go as far as Mexico, we're starting to see an uptick in the southern Mexican ports taking cargo coming off the back of South American revisions. And we're seeing awful lot of interest there from the lines as well as in terms of cargo pushes. And you mentioned the Brazilian paper.
I just see this as being the next big push for cargo. There's a lot of capacity out chasing it but.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: And do you think this will transpire by Q3?
[00:29:30] Speaker C: Yes, certainly. I think we're going to see some further growth in Q3.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Well, I look forward to judging these in a few months time.
My prediction is that CTS are going to be releasing some exciting things over the next few months. So could you give us the details of this please, Nigel?
[00:29:47] Speaker C: Yeah. So watch this space. CTS is going to launch some trade newsletters. We do a global newsletter at the moment. And from September we'll be launching trade newsletters to give a slightly different and deeper perspective on some of the big trades that we have our data on. But it's going to be very interesting because we can talk at a much deeper level to our customers about the areas that matter to them.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: That sounds like it's going to be very useful for us as journalists and I'm sure for lots of people making decisions. I think data is the most important thing at the moment. Nigel, thank you so much for your help this episode and yours as well, Gav. It's been lovely to speak to you both.
[00:30:24] Speaker C: Goodbye. Thanks very much, everyone.
[00:30:26] Speaker D: Thank you very much, Charlotte. Thank you, Nigel. Goodbye. All.
[00:30:47] Speaker C: Right.
