Import and Export Containerised Merchandise Projections by Port

Investigate the past and future behaviour of trade for commodities travelling in and out of Australia.
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Introduction

Are you interested in import and export trends of goods for ports in Australia? Do you need to plan for future volume in your supply chain?

This interactive dashboard provides information on freight movement in and out of Australia by commodity type and port. It uses past data to project future behaviour around international trade for Australians and Australian businesses. It builds on the previously released released Import and Export Containerised Merchandise Projections data and dashboard by providing more granular detail where possible.

Date range: June 2015 – current.

About the data

The data presented here comes from the Department of Home Affairs' Integrated Cargo System. Data in the dashboard is summarised to 3-digit Standard International Trade Classification (SITC). Note that when fewer than 15 items in any month are imported or exported, the good is grouped to the SITC 1-digit level. Errors have been removed and data has been averaged over 12 months to remove variability. Port-level volumes have been determined as a percent of the national total. Percentages have been projected into the future based on past behaviour. Percentages are scaled and then applied to the national projections for each commodity previously released.

Users can choose to investigate different modes of international freight movement and select their desired good (or goods). The data can be useful in understanding trends and future trade behaviours in and out of Australia.

Limitations

  1. The modelling applied here only considers the past behaviour of trade. It does not include the effects of other circumstances that may impact the trade of that commodity, e.g. the price of jet fuel, or the port, e.g. unscheduled maintenance.
  2. The outlier treatment to remove errors in the data is applied on a month-to-month basis, comparing each point to the 12 months of data around it. If a highly unusual import or export volume occurred compared to the baseline for that good - it is treated like an outlier and removed.
  3. Raw data is available from July 2014 onwards. Due to the rolling 12-month averaging, aggregated data is only available from June 2015.
  4. Projection accuracy decreases with increasing time.
  5. For sea trade, only containerised trade and vehicles are included in this dataset.
  6. Certain goods have been made confidential as per the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ International Trade in Goods Confidential Commodities List. These goods are only confidential for certain time periods and so, the volumes reported in the dashboard may not be exact for the full time period.
  7. Goods that are declared in alternate quantities (e.g. number of items or litres) have been converted into tonnages using modelling. As such, items that are rarely imported/exported may show unexpected tonnages.
  8. Trade through ports that are not a major national port have been aggregated to a state level. Major national seaports used here are those for containerised goods and vehicles.
  9. Ports that contribute less than 5% on average of the national total per month for each commodity have been added together under a national “Unspecified ports” label.
  10. Where projections inaccurately project negative forecast weights, these projections have been truncated given the context of the data.

Please note that this dashboard is optimised for web-browsers. Mobile users may experience some difficulties.

Feedback

The NFDH is working to provide more interactives and tools to explore international trade data. Please Contact the NFDH team if you would like to learn more, or have any questions or suggestions for improving this interactive. All feedback is appreciated.