Singapore's Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), the world's fifth-biggest container shipping firm, said on Monday it carried 34 percent more containers from April 3 to April 30 from a year ago.

NOL said in a statement it carried the equivalent of 212,000 40-foot containers (FEUs) on its ships in the period, up from 157,800 a year earlier.

The average revenue from each container rose 15 percent during the period to $2,669 from a year earlier, signalling a recovery in the shipping sector.

The rise in container revenue was largely due to improved core freight rates on a number of trade routes, particularly on services between Asia and Europe, and also higher bunker recovery, it said. (Reuters)