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aNb Media News, January 9, 2019

NRF Reports Retail Imports Level Off Amid Rush to Beat Tariffs

Imports at the nation’s major retail container ports have slowed down after a months-long rush to beat increased tariffs on goods from China, according to the monthly Global Port Tracker report released today by the National Retail Federation and Hackett Associates.

U.S. ports covered by Global Port Tracker handled 1.81 million Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units in November, the latest month for which after-the-fact numbers are available. That was up 2.5 percent year-over-year but down 11.4 percent from the record of 2.04 million TEU set in October. A TEU is one 20-foot-long cargo container or its equivalent.

December was estimated at 1.79 million TEU, a 3.7 percent year-over-year increase. That would bring 2018 to a total of 21.6 million TEU, an increase of 5.3 percent over 2017’s record 20.5 million TEU.

January is forecast at 1.75 million TEU, down 0.9 percent from January 2018; February at 1.67 million TEU, also down 0.9 percent year-over-year; March at 1.55 million TEU, up 0.6 percent; April at 1.69 million TEU, up 3.7 percent, and May at 1.8 million TEU, down 1.3 percent. February and March are typically two of the slowest months of the year for imports, both because of the post-holiday drop in demand and because of Lunar New Year factory shutdowns in Asia.

Global Port Tracker, which is produced for NRF by the consulting firm Hackett Associates, covers the U.S. ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach, Oakland, Seattle and Tacoma on the West Coast; New York/New Jersey, Port of Virginia, Charleston, Savannah, Port Everglades, Miami and Jacksonville on the East Coast, and Houston on the Gulf Coast.

New Report Shows Pet Wearables Market to Expand

Transparency Market Research (TMR) reports the global pet wearable market has a highly consolidated vendor landscape with some companies (DeLaval, Whistle Labs, Nedap N.V., Loc8tor, IceRobotics, and PetPace) dominating the market. These players are trying to improve the products and trying to maintain their position in the market. Additionally, these companies are increasingly adopting the policies and strategies such as collaborations and merger and acquisition.

According to TMR, the global pet wearable market pegged the value of  $1 billion in the year 2016 and is expected to hit $2.5 billion by the end of the year 2024. The market is anticipated to swell with a CAGR of 12.0 percent over the forecast period from 2016–2024.

The GPS segment dominated the global pet wearable market in the year 2016. On the basis of region, North America dominated the global pet wearable market followed by Europe in the year 2016. Both the regions collectively accounted for the share of 75 percent in the pet wearable market.

Growing Awareness about Pet Health to Propel Growth

The pet wearable market is gaining traction due to growing awareness among the pet owners about their health. The growing inclination toward the adoption of pets as a companion for mental stability, fitness, and entertainment is boosting the expenditure on the well-being of pets. This boost in the adoption of the wearables for a pet is propelling growth of the global pet wearables market. Additionally, the use of pet wearables offers some benefits such as connection with a human to pets for tracking their daily activities and monitoring their health with these devices. This monitoring generates data for food intake, heart, and respiratory rate and patterns, and calories burnt by the pets during the day. This data generated by devices is used for analyzing the health of pets. The aforementioned factors are boosting the adoption of pet wearables, which in turn, is propelling the growth of the global pet wearables market.

Growing Advancement in the Pet Wearable to Propel Growth

Despite these growth factors, lack of effective batteries, which lasts for few days, or hours due to high power consumption coupled with high costs of wearable devices. These factors are expected to challenge growth of the pet wearable market.

Nonetheless, growing adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies is playing a key role in the boosting adoption of pet wearable. Growing awareness coupled with easy availability of advanced products globally and especially in the developing countries is expected to offer lucrative opportunities for growth of the global pet wearable market. In addition, uptake of connected devices and wearables such as mobile application, connected wearables, and data analytics is expected to witness a sudden boost in the adoption of pet wearable and expected to remain over the forecast period.