transpacific


horizons Singapore investment bank CIMB said in a recent


research note that from the start of the year: “Air freight demand has surged, together with demand for container shipping services to the US. Air freight may have benefited particularly from the shortage of sea freight space, as containership liners struggled to keep pace with the surge in demand.” However, this seaborne capacity crunch has abated, as


weekly capacity deployment in August was 25 percent higher on the Far East - North America routes than in January 2010, according to Alphaliner. Furthermore, containership liners have been moving empty containers to Asia more effectively, relieving the severe shortage of container boxes from key Asian ports. As a result, CIMB noted, some of the spill-over into air freight demand has now returned to sea freight. Schenker Logistics Malaysia director of air freight Lionel


Tan said current air cargo rates to North America reflect an increase of about 20 percent from a year ago. This compares well, from a shipper’s point of view, with ocean freight rates, which are up by more than 50 percent on the transpacific year-on-year. “Besides the growth in demand, current air freight rates


are also supported by the scaling down in capacity by players. But, there is still a lot of uncertainty going forward in terms of stable demand. Basically, the industry is still in a recovery period where everybody is fighting for that slice from a small cake,” Tan said. Going forward, he expects the pre-Christmas peak season to happen between September and October. The US remains far firmer for air freight than across the


transatlantic ‘Pond’ in Europe. The two-speed recovery in air cargo continued into July, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), with European carriers


AIR LOGISTICSCHINA 21


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