Freighter operator Pacific Air Cargo has introduced PACTRAK, a new airfreight tracking and notification service.
The tracking service is integrated into the company’s website and allows customers to know the status of their shipment at any point in its journey.
The system offers shipment update notifications through SMS text messages, emails, or both. Notifications can also be tailored for different milestones during the journey, such as flight departure or arrival.
“We are pleased to offer this innovative and state-of-the-art tracking service to our partners,” said Tanja Janfruechte, chief executive of Pacific Air Cargo. “We believe that PACTRAK will make shipping with Pacific Air Cargo even more convenient, and we look forward to introducing other enhancements and useful tools in the future.”
Pacific Air Cargo serves Los Angeles (LAX), Hawaii (HNL and all of the main Hawaiian Islands), Pago Pago (PPG) and Guam (GUM).
Source: Air Cargo News
FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) and one of the world’s largest express transportation companies, today announces the launch of a new intercontinental flight between Europe and Japan, giving customers improved direct connectivity to the country and additional capacity to Japan and Northern China.
The flight, operated by a Boeing 777, adds approximately 440,000 pounds of additional capacity per week. It departs from Charles-de-Gaulle Airport in Paris, France, and flies four times per week directly to Kansai International Airport in Osaka, Japan. It will then go on to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in Guangzhou, China.
Additionally, one day a week, a flight will leave Charles-de-Gaulle Airport to Singapore Changi Airport, before travelling on to Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, adding another 110,000 pounds of weekly capacity.
These new connections – along with the company’s recently announced flights for Asia Pacific exporters – strengthen the FedEx commitment to meeting customer demand, particularly for e-commerce shipments in the region. In June 2021 FedEx reported a growth of e-commerce parcel volume by more than $1 billion year over year out of Asia and Europe.
The new flight will support businesses that operate on EU-Japan and intra-Asian lanes by improving access to APAC markets, many of which are rebounding following the initial shock economies experienced in 2020. Key benefits for European businesses include:
- Direct connectivity to Japan – customers will benefit from delivery within 48 hours to many key cities in Japan.
- Additional capacity to other APAC markets – this flight provides customers with additional capacity for express and freight shipments.
“Online retail sales in APAC generated approximately $2.45 trillion in 2020 – and with research suggesting e-commerce sales in APAC are expected to almost double by 2025, it is crucial that European businesses can easily and reliably access the growth potential this region offers,” said Karen Reddington, president of FedEx Express Europe. “Our latest network enhancement means European businesses now have improved access to the enormous growth opportunities available in Japan and other APAC markets, and they can rely on FedEx as a partner to grow their business on this thriving trade lane.”
The high-growth APAC markets will appeal to many European businesses looking to grow in the region. Japanese global imports increased by 28.3% between May 2020 and May 2021, and Europe accounts for 16% of all Japanese imports ($103 billion). Japan is also the fourth largest e-commerce market. As one of the leading express logistics players in the APAC region, FedEx currently operates more than 200 weekly flights in and out of APAC to trans-Pacific and European destinations, connecting EU and APAC customers to the company’s extensive global network.
Lufthansa Cargo has joined a new air cargo digitalisation project which aims to improve the networking of airfreight companies in Germany.
The Digital Test Field Air Cargo of the German Federal Ministry of Transport (BMVI), which is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML), is looking to increase the efficiency and performance and competitiveness of air cargo in Germany.
As part of the project, Lufthansa Cargo will focus enhancing data exchange between partners in the transport chain. This data exchange is then used as the basis for all “data-driven optimisations and artificial intelligence based applications”.
Digital accompanying documents from manufacturers to consignees will be made available to all parties by using IATA’s open One Record standard.
Likewise, temperature data, position data and photos of the entire transport chain are to be made available in order to identify and solve problems earlier.
“This can increase transparency and make processes and capacities more efficient through better forecasts and higher data quality,” Lufthansa Cargo said. “Eventually, this also leads to a reduction in CO2 emissions.”
The project was launched as air cargo in Germany is in “fierce competition with locations and providers in Europe and the world”, the carrier said, adding that “air cargo has proven its systemic relevance for supplying the German and European economy and society during the pandemic”.
Lufthansa Cargo’s executive board member for operations and human resources Harald Gloy, and a member of the BMVI’s Innovation Commission, said: “We are pleased that the Federal Ministry of Transport has clearly committed itself to airfreight in Germany with the Digital Test Field Air Cargo.
“We want to contribute to further strengthening Germany as a business location. That is why we are contributing our many years of experience in digitalisation along the supply chain to this nationwide project and ultimately also want to set international standards.
“Digitalising airfreight further also means making it more sustainable. To this end, we see great potential in optimised data exchange between all partners in the airfreight transport chain, for example, which we want to leverage.”
Source: Air Cargo News
The Cabinet of Ministers proposes that trucks weighing more than 12 tons should pay for travel on highways of national importance. The relevant bills prepared by the Ministry of Infrastructure were supported without discussion at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers on September 22.
The funds will be consolidated in the state road fund. This money will become an additional resource for creating a qualitatively new infrastructure in the country.
“The logic of the project is quite simple – thousands of kilometers of roads in Ukraine are being built at the expense of taxpayers, that is, all Ukrainians. At the same time, thousands of kilometers of Ukrainian roads receive the greatest load and wear from trucks,” commented Denis Shmyhal, Prime Minister of Ukraine.
Budget revenues can reach up to 9 billion hryvnia, depending on the average tariff (1-3 hryvnias / km) and the length of the roads on which the fee is charged. They also plan to introduce a traffic control system for vehicles using radio frequency identification tags and introduce an electronic toll system.
Source: Logist.Today
A transload facility at Vancouver developed by Maersk and Canadian Pacific is open for business.
The new Pacific Transload Express facility will bring “more speed and agility to demand fluctuations while also reducing demurrage and detention costs,” Maersk touted.
The facility consists of 117,000 square feet and 103 doors, and it has the ability to transload international containers into domestic 53-foot trailers. Maersk Warehousing & Distribution will serve as the facility’s exclusive operator.
The facility’s aims is to serve customers involved in the Asia-Pacific Northwest supply chain. Anticipated customers primarily will include fast-moving consumer goods in the retail and lifestyle segment, with auto parts representing the remainder of customers.
The facility was built on land owned by Canadian Pacific (CP) that is adjacent to its intermodal facility in Vancouver. CP will shuttle containers by rail from the three major Vancouver container terminals — the Centerm, Vanterm and Deltaport terminals — to the Pacific Transload Express facility.
The facility is part of an effort to reduce transit times, which can range from 35 to 75 days from an origin in Asia to a destination in North America. Maersk intends to add a sortation system at the facility to support operations there.
Maersk also said the facility will help meet environmental social governance goals because integrating and extending CP rail service from the Port of Vancouver “will eliminate over 100,000 truck trips per year in the Vancouver area (almost 60,000 round trips per year) and save over 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) emissions per year.”
Source: Freight Waves
The Rail Working Group (RWG) is the international nonprofit charged with global implementation of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol, a uniform system for identifying, recognizing and enforcing security for creditors financing railway rolling stock. It is promoting a new global digital platform for tracking freight and wagons.
The platform allows to identify rolling stock on the world’s railways using the URVIS (Unique Rail Vehicle Identification System). It will work on cloud technology. However, for this purpose cars will need to be provided with numbers in the URVIS system.
To accept the car into the system, it is necessary to install mobile sensors on it, which are powered by solar energy. Then connect to the system gateways to ensure tracking and accounting of rail freight and wagons. This creates a single global identifier for the rolling stock.
Feature of the project
The feature of the project is that participation in it allows customers to take advantage of a reduced rate loan under the Luxembourg Protocol. It is used to organize railway logistics chains. However, we will have to agree that at the same time tracking the condition and location of the car with the cargo will be available to creditors. In this way, the lender can reduce its risks.
Know Your Cargo (KYC) program is installed at the client accordingly. It opens access to the positioning of rolling stock.
The interest of private investors, who provide customers with soft loans, is to create a new international system for recognizing creditors’ rights to rolling stock, regardless of its location, to increase funding for the purchase of wagons and the efficiency of investment in it (from the private sector).
The Luxembourg Rail Protocol was adopted in 2007 under the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment. It is currently ratified in some EU countries and Mozambique. It is expected to be signed in South Africa in the near future. A number of States (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Namibia, Malta, Finland, Ukraine and Mauritius) are working on the Protocol.
This document applies to all rolling stock, including locomotives, tram cars and subway trains. And the protocol itself is expected to enter into force for member states in 2022.
Source: Ukraine Rail Monitoring
EUROCONTROL’s latest data snapshot reports the aviation industry’s COVID-19 recovery, this summer, with flights back to 71 per cent of 2019 levels within the EU.
This average, however, conceals a wide variation between countries and between different traffic flows for each country. The graphic illustrates this variation, taking examples from some of EU’s larger aviation markets.
EUROCONTROL noted in a data snapshot in March that domestic flights were holding up better during the COVID-19 pandemic than international flights. This summer, that trend has continued. Turkey, indeed, exceeded 2019 domestic flight counts already in July. Then Italy beat that in August, reaching 107 per cent of 2019, with France, Greece, Norway, and Spain all at 90 per cent or more. In the graph, German domestic flights stand out by being overtaken by other flows.
International arrivals and departures include long- and short-haul, and both passenger and cargo flights. COVID-19 passenger travel restrictions have mostly affected international passenger flights, and this is reflected in the relatively low figures for international flights (as compared to domestic ones). From the graph, UK and Norway remain particularly weak on this flow: still less than half of 2019 levels. Key holiday destinations, on the other hand, saw a rapid recovery in July and even more in August.
Overflights, not touching an airport in the country, often make a significant contribution to revenues of a country’s air navigation service provider. The UK has the weakest overflights of these eight countries, with both Ireland and North Atlantic, which make up most of this flow, slow to recover. Italy and Spain are much stronger, with a strong acceleration starting in July; for example, Italy picked up flights from France and Switzerland to Greece, both of which are already above 2019 counts.
Source: EUROCONTROL
Global demand, measured in freight ton-kilometers (CTKs *), increased by 8.6% compared to July 2019. Overall, growth remains significant compared to the long-term average growth trend of around 4.7%. It is reported by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
As comparisons between 2020 and 2021 monthly results are distorted by the extraordinary impact of COVID-19, all comparisons to follow are to June 2019, which followed a normal demand pattern.
The growth rate has slowed slightly since June 2019, when demand increased by 9.2% (compared to pre-COVID-19 levels).
Capacity continues to recover, but is still 10.3% lower than in July 2019.
The strongest growth in air cargo traffic in July compared to the “dock” July 2019 was observed in the countries of North America – by 21.2%. In the countries of the Middle East – by 11.3%. More moderate growth was recorded in Europe (6.1%) and Asia-Pacific (1.2%). The decline was noted only in Latin America – by 9.8%.
Source: IATA
The shipping industry is experiencing the worst crisis in several decades. Over the past year, the average world cost of transporting one container has increased by 370%, on some popular destinations prices have increased by 500%.
Today shipping a 40-foot container from China to the east coast of the United States costs $ 20,000, although a month ago the price was half that.
Shipping prices have increased due to:
- rapid recovery in demand after the global lockdown,
- port blockades
- and a shortage of containers.
How did the container shortage come about? After the lockdown in 2020, China was the first to recover, and transport companies carried containers from there to the United States, but did not return back. In addition, due to the quarantine, cargo in American and European ports was processed much longer than usual.
At the same time, 96% of containers are produced by Chinese companies. It is almost impossible to increase production in the future due to the shortage of steel.
Meanwhile, China’s exports rose 50% in the first quarter of 2021. Reuters notes that shipping companies have begun to openly hunt for profits, and the shipping market has become a major auction.
The crisis was deepened by the accident of the container ship Ever Green in the Suez Canal on 23 March. Six days while the ship was being floated was enough for the world economy to lose about $ 100 million.
In May, an incident occurred in the port of Shenzhen. An asymptomatic carrier of Covid-19 was found among the workers, and the Chinese policy of “zero tolerance” led to the fact that just for one patient, the whole terminal was closed for almost a month. This led to a redistribution of goods to nearby terminals. And in August, the same incident occurred in the port of Ningbo-Zhoushan.
Consequences for Ukraine
The crisis has already affected world prices for coffee, rice, sugar and a number of other goods. Although the end consumers will not feel this immediately.
For Ukraine, the increase in the cost of shipping goods by sea will primarily affect imports from China – prices for Chinese goods may grow by an average of 10%. If due to the pandemic it cost 2-4 thousand dollars to send a 40-foot container from China to Odessa, now the price has risen to 10-15 thousand.
Thus, it is possible to establish a railway route from China to Ukraine through two ferries, bypassing Russia. Previously, such a route was too expensive, but now it is quite capable of competing with the inflated prices of sea transportation. The same goes for air travel.
Source: EP