Danish transport and logistics company A.P. Moeller-Maersk AS notes the imbalance in the global container transport market amid a shortage of containers in China and expects it to recover in 2021.
“While there are still many uncertainties due to the global pandemic, we expect container volumes to return to normal in 2021. By that time, we expect the main factors affecting freight rates (lack of containers, chartered ships and free warehouse space in ports) “, – the company said.
“We have seen a stronger than expected recovery in demand, resulting in shortages of ships and equipment worldwide, as well as bottlenecks in terminals and in the ground transportation segment,” Maersk said.
“In the second quarter of 2020, freight rates increased by 4.5% and by 4.4% in the third quarter of 2020, mainly due to volatility in demand and a shortage of ships and equipment,” the company added.
“Due to the high demand for containers from Asia and to meet the needs of customers in delivery, we were forced to temporarily suspend reservations in the Maersk Spot online service for December shipments on the E1W route (route between Europe and Asia). In other words, despite the accepted operational measures, we simply do not have a place on container ships, about which customers have been notified “, – summed up in Maersk.
Source: CTS
The port of Shanghai, China reaffirmed its position as the world’s busiest container port last month setting a new record for the total number of boxes handled. This comes as China is reporting an overall strong rebound in port traffic and the world’s shipping lines are scrambling to meet demand.
Container throughput at Shanghai Port hit a record high of 4.2 million TEUs in October, a year-over-year increase of 15.7 percent according to official data released by Chinese authorities.
Chinese officials pointed to a strong economic recovery as well as their efforts to mitigate the coronavirus.
They noted that the Port of Shanghai has invested in new technologies and the integration of operations along the Yangtze. The officials also pointed to the ongoing efforts on the fourth phase of the Yangshan Deep-Water Port in Shanghai, the world’s largest automated cargo terminal.
In 2019, total container throughput came to 43.3 million TEUs at the Port of Shanghai – making the port the biggest container port in the world for the tenth year in a row. In the first half of 2020, the container throughput of the Port of Shanghai reached 20.06 million TEUs, and it continued to rank first in the container throughput of China’s ports.
Source: More Than Shipping
Air cargo airline Air France KLM Martinair Cargo, a member of the Air France KLM group, is in the process of preparing for the global distribution of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, which is currently being developed by Pfizer and BioNTech.
Transporting vaccines will be an unprecedented logistics operation in scale. It is initially projected that a total of about 15 billion vaccines will be distributed around the world, and a significant proportion of them will require special conditions to transport.
The new vaccine should be stored deep frozen at -70 ℃. (Other vaccines require a constant temperature of 2 ℃ to 8 ℃). This means that logistics solutions will be essential to ensure an efficient and quality vaccine distribution chain.
Air France KLM Martinair Cargo has many years of experience in temperature controlled pharmaceutical transport and was the first airline group to receive the prestigious CEIV certification for pharmaceutical transport from IATA.
The proliferation of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines presents a particular challenge in terms of scale, special transport requirements and safety.
“To prepare for this venture, four months ago we set up a dedicated new vaccine coordination team, which included representatives from the relevant departments of Air France KLM Martinair Cargo. As part of our preparatory action plan, we have already launched a dedicated air-conditioned warehouse with a volume of 1118 m3. which was built at the Schiphol Pharma base in Amsterdam. “
According to Gert Jan Rolands, Senior Vice President Sales and Distribution of Air France KLM Martinair Cargo, an additional 2061 m3 refrigerated warehouse is also being built there. On the other hand, at Charles de Gaulle Pharma in Paris, a similar temperature-controlled warehouse is almost complete.
“We will be using advanced passive refrigeration solutions to transport vaccines to complement our wide range of dedicated active temperature controlled containers. In addition, the transport process will be closely monitored with immediate interventions possible,” added Gert Jan Rulands.
“We believe that the collaboration and coordination of dedicated teams is an essential element of the global vaccine distribution that awaits us. We have already established relationships with many participants in the supply chain, including shippers, shipping companies, container suppliers, airports, pharmaceutical companies, and authorities and health care institutions.
We are confident that close cooperation between all parties involved will ensure the successful completion of this logistic task. In recent weeks, we have successfully transported the first vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. I believe Air France KLM Martinair Cargo is ready to distribute the vaccine in the Netherlands, France and other countries around the world, ”commented Adrian den Heyer, Vice President of Air France-KLM Cargo.
Source: Air Cargo News
UIC is a subsidiary intermodal enterprise in Ukraine of the German company Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) that will be engaged in container transportation by rail between the Port of Odessa and other economic centers of the country.
HHLA operates the largest container terminal in Ukraine, located in the port of Odessa. The company, which actively cooperates with private terminals, has a railway terminal, where container block trains are already being formed.
In recent years, Ukrainian ports have developed very dynamically. Last year, the capacity of the Black Sea port of Odessa increased by 8.5% to almost 650,000 TEU. However, only 22% of containers arriving at ports are transported by rail. By comparison, at the port of Hamburg, the railways take 46% of the containers, which makes supplies cheaper and cleaner given the greenness of the railways.
UIC, which is starting to assemble and ship entire container trains, sees great prospects for itself. Until now, the Ukrainian railway on domestic routes sent, at best, several cars with containers as part of hybrid trains, to which they simultaneously clung to gondola cars, tanks, etc.
From the beginning of October, UIC started sending one container train between Odessa and Ternopil. In November, there will be two more weekly trains from Odessa to Kharkiv and Zaporizhia. The UIC also expects to take part in shipments between China and the EU, which have recently become more frequent via Ukraine. Although Belarus is considered the main transit country, the country’s railways are already overloaded with trains from the New Silk Road, experts say. Therefore, Ukraine will definitely take on at least part of the traffic. The volume of traffic between Europe and Asia on Ukrainian tracks is expected to increase by about 20% annually.
Source: RailFreight
Shippers have recently been facing more and more serious problems, such as the acute shortage of staff in ports, the shortage of containers, as well as the rapid rise in tariffs and the emergence of new financial charges. This may indicate the beginning of a global crisis in the global transportation market, experts say.
If the trend does not change, it is the situation in the ports that can cause traffic paralysis. According to analysts cited by The loadstar, the situation will still worsen until the Chinese New Year, which is celebrated in February.
Facts indicating the development of the crisis
The New Zealand port of Auckland, which is at the very end of global supply chains, has set an additional charge for ships in traffic jams. The additional cost is $ 300 per TEU, experts say. This money will be an additional burden on the prices of goods imported from Europe, Turkey and Israel, as well as from China, Japan and other countries. Delays in unloading ships in Auckland now range from 10 to 13 days, which they have to spend waiting for a free berth.
Australian ports also suffer, but from the accumulation of a huge number of empty containers. According to some estimates, at least 50,000 TEUs remain in their territory. This is especially true of Sydney. Australia is considering how to evacuate all these empty containers to other ports where suppliers are waiting for them. Most likely, special flights of cargo ships will be organized. But all these measures are still planned for the future.
In China, on the other hand, there is an acute shortage of containers, which also creates traffic jams and causes significant increases in transportation tariffs.
According to Hapag-Lloyd, which in this situation has already stopped accepting orders for future shipments of agricultural products from North America, now the whole industry is facing a “historic challenge”, and market participants must do everything possible to strengthen control over the circulation of containers.
According to Nico Hecker, director of global container logistics, containers have become a real “black swan” in today’s market. After an incredible drop in demand for 40-foot containers about six months ago, we are now seeing the strongest growth in history. “It is hard to believe that in the spring the carrier had 600,000 TEUs inactive, for which it was feverishly looking for sites with cheap storage. And now container vessels with a total capacity of 350 thousand TEU are stuck near the shore only because there are no empty containers,” – Hecker explained.
Due to containers in places where there is a shortage, the average delay in loading ships is now 7-8 days.
Source: Logist.FM
In September, D.S.L. LLC became a member of JCtrans Logistics Network. JCtrans was founded in China in 2003 and currently has nearly 10,000,000 corporate users from over 200 countries and regions, as well as hundreds of thousands of logistics enterprises. JCtrans members are more than 2 thousand logistics companies from 165 countries of the world.
“Our company has been organizing international cargo air, sea and multimodal transportation for 15 years, providing all the necessary range of related services. And although we have long been part of a large international family of forwarders, we are always open to cooperation with new partners,” says Vladimir Doroshenko, CEO “DSL” company. – By joining JCtrans, we plan to further expand the boundaries of our activities, establish new business relationships and be useful for both customers and partners in the international freight market. “
With large domestic and international logistics and retail industry resources, JCtrans creates a centralized, secure and fast logistics transaction and settlement platform where traders can look for freight forwarders to expand purchasing channels, and freight forwarders offer logistics solutions to global partners to build long-term cooperative relationships.
American Airlines and United Airlines have sent furlough notices to a total of more than 32,000 employees, saying they cannot afford to have them on payroll after Thursday, the date when the federal CARES Act Payroll Support Program expires.
The move comes after lawmakers and the White House failed to agree on a COVID relief package that includes additional federal aid for airlines.
“To our departing 13,000 family members: thank you for your dedication and we look forward to welcoming you back”, United said in a message sent to employees.
The US government’s pandemic relief effort had provided some $25 billion in loans and grants to airlines. Passenger air travel rebounded in June and July, but the numbers have not grown since, and the airlines have much more workers than they need.
Source: New Europe
First A350 cabin to cargo conversion with Airbus Service Bulletin completed with Asiana Airlines
South Korea’s Asiana Airlines has become the world’s first airline to embody the Airbus solution to convert an A350 passenger cabin to carry freight. This solution, packaged as an Airbus Service Bulletin (SB) no. SB 25-P170, was developed in close cooperation between Airbus, European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and Asiana.
The modified A350 was put into service in the last week of September flying the Seoul-Los Angeles route, transporting IT and electronic equipment, as well as e-commerce exports such as clothing.
From October, the aircraft will service additional high-demand routes including Seoul-Ho Chi Minh. The project required the replacement of 283 economy seats with cargo pallets on the cabin floor to firmly secure cargo loads. The two-week modification increases the aircraft’s cargo capacity by five additional metric tonnes to 23 tonnes.
Amidst the global impact of COVID-19 on the aviation industry, Asiana is pursuing an active response towards utilising the cargo carrying capabilities of its passenger airliner fleet to expand its cargo capacity.
Source: Airbus
Lufthansa on Tuesday added its ninth Boeing 777F to its fleet when the freighter aircraft landed for the first time at Frankfurt Airport (FRA).
The freighter with the registration D-ALFI was in flight as LH8145 for 10 hours and 10 minutes after take-off from Everett Airport (PAE) in Washington State. The new aircraft bears the name “¡Buenos días México!”, which it took over from an aircraft with the registration D-ALCH that had already been taken out of service.
Lufthansa Cargo now operates nine modern Triple Seven at its home hub in Frankfurt. In addition, the company is marketing the cargo capacity of four more aircraft of this type, which is operated by the AeroLogic joint venture based at Leipzig Airport. A total of thirteen highly efficient Boeing 777Fs fly for the cargo crane’s customers.
Peter Gerber, CEO and chairman of the executive board of Lufthansa Cargo, said, “Especially in acute crises, air cargo secures important supply routes and thus makes a fundamental contribution to the global economy. Mastering short-term global challenges are one of our core competencies, countering long-term global challenges is our responsibility. With our new fleet, we are underlining our claim to actively and sustainably combine economic and ecological efficiency.”
The twin-engine Boeing 777F is around 20 per cent more efficient and emits less carbon dioxide than the preceding MD-11F. In addition, the new model meets the strict noise protection requirements of ICAO Annex 16, Volume I, Chapter 14. Due to the higher cargo capacity and range, the same freight performance can be achieved in the future with noticeably fewer aircraft movements.
The six MD-11 freighters yet in service will be phased out over the coming months, with the first half to be phased out within this year. Lufthansa Cargo first put the eye-catching MD-11F tri-jet into service in 1998 because of its efficiency advantages. It replaced the four-engine jumbo freighters until 2005.
Source: itln