April 26 - The Skelton Sherborne Shipping Index for March has been released and shows the volumes of Australian imports of heavy machinery have decreased for the second month running.

Machinery import volumes in March decreased by 35 percent overall to 2,954 units, though this included some normalisation of apparent exaggerated Road Making/Paving and other Public Works Equipment data in February.

An increase in tyre volumes was noted for the month of March.

In January 2012, Skelton Sherborne introduced the Skelton Sherborne Tyre Index, which measures the amount of work currently underway in the mining and construction sector through the practical measure of tyres that are worn and need replacing as a result.

The Skelton Sherborne Shipping Index is published monthly and is available on the forwarder's website. It offers an indication of the state of the mining and construction industries by way of import activity into Australia. The index is created from data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the forwarder's own data.

www.skeltonsherborne.com