Throughout history, the amount of trade in a region has always been a good indicator for its wealth. Technology has improved, trade has become more and more internationalized and its amount is now heavily linked with global GDP. But it is far away from being a linear relationship. While global GDP had grown 3.5% annually, global trade had a growth rate of 5.7% per year (data from 1980-2012). This trend is reflecting the effect of specialization and the tendency to produce intermediate goods in countries with low labor costs.
This huge growth is at least partially owed to increasing standardization, namely container transport. As world trade is expected to rise even morein the next years, companies active in the container business will definitely get their share of profit.
Overview
CAI International (CAP) is one of the world's leading freight container leasing and management companies. It was founded in 1989 and since that time has steadily grown its business. The company offers service in 3 different areas: container leasing, container sales (new and used) and container investment management. The last one offers institutional investors the opportunity to own their own container portfolio, while the micro-management is done by CAI.
At 31 December 2013, CAI operated a total container fleet of 1,144,454 TEUs, in which its managed container fleet had a share of 25% with a sinking tendency. TEU or twenty-foot equivalent is a unit of cargo capacity based on a 20-foot container. So, this basically means CAI operates with more than 1.1 million single containers.