News / EU-LatAm growth remains one-way traffic, despite recent trade deal

European shippers have yet to experience any sort of benefit from this year’s EU-South America trade deal, volumes actually declined in three of the first five months of the year – although there are signs of a bump to come.

Container Trades Statistics (CTS) data, which runs two months in arrears, shows EU-South America volumes dropped precipitously in January by 10.6% year on year, with subsequent falls of 5.9% and 2.4% in February and March.

Despite this, forwarders told The Loadstar that while there had been “no immediate impact from the EU-Mercosur deal, we are already experiencing a marked uptick from new European customers for quotations for shipping goods to the LatAm countries”.

One said: “We expect the growth to be gradual but consistent, and we are fairly confident that once volumes start flowing, they will be there for the long-term,” adding that automotive, machinery, and pharmaceuticals and chemicals seemed to be “where the action is”.

In the reverse direction, the picture is markedly more impressive, with growth of 9.2%, 4.8%, 12.7%, 0.1% and 10.8% for the first five months, the LatAm-to-EU trade clearly sustaining the momentum recorded over 2025.

Every month of last year saw that trade grow, from a volume perspective, ending the year 8.7% up on 2024, with forwarders telling The Loadstar the trade had “been on fire”, with surging demand out of Europe for South American perishables.

“These commodities are proving to be the engines of growth this year too,” one Brazilian forwarder told The Loadstar, “with the main sales into Europe revolving around coffee, fruit, refrigerated cargo, other foodstuffs, and pulp and leather.”

The forwarder added: “With the deal between the EU and South America, we are expecting volumes to keep up the momentum that has been recorded over the past 18 months, but there could be some issues with capacity in the short term.”

On the pricing front, capacity by and large cost the same in January and February as it had 12 months earlier, before a slight dip of 1.5%, year on year, in both directions in March, followed by 3% and 1.5% increases in April and May, respectively, according to CTS.