high-tech
RECENT FIGURES for global semiconductor sales – an important indicator of overall worldwide high- tech sector manufacturing activity – suggest the industry continued to recover well in 2010, at least during the first eight months of the year. According to the Semiconductor
Industry Association (SIA), global semiconductor sales in August totalled US$25.7 billion, nearly 2 percent up on July and 33 percent ahead of August 2009. Sales for the first eight months of 2010 totaled almost $195 billion, up 44 percent on the comparable period last year.
“PC and wireless-related
products, along with infrastructure expansion in emerging markets, particularly in China and India, continued to drive sales,” reported SIA president Brian Toomey in October. However, he also warned that concerns about economic conditions in the US and Europe, coupled with seasonal patterns, “bear close monitoring”. Overall, though, Toomey
concluded: “We remain confident in our $290.5 billion forecast (for 2010), which represents 28.4 percent annual growth.”
Mark Middleton, director South East Asia and Australasia
Bischoff notes the importance of high- tech traffic in China’s air cargo market
for worldwide air charter service company Chapman Freeborn, says there has been particular growth recently in high-tech air cargo traffic out of China to developing markets such as South America, especially Brazil, and Africa. That growth, he said, has opened up additional opportunities for cargo charter operations. “Into Brazil we are perhaps talking about a couple of
B747Fs a week at times now. For Africa, it is more likely products would be transhipped through somewhere like Dubai, perhaps involving a part charter, part scheduled capacity, operation. That high-tech traffic is predominantly coming out of Hong Kong and mainland China,” Middleton informed.
freighter service network in Asia includes daily flights out of Shanghai and 14 flights a week out of Hong Kong to Europe, reported a similar story. “For our Asian export network, which is about 60 percent of our system, I would say that half the business we do is related to the high- tech sector. Globally, the figure for us is probably about 20 percent but it would still be the single most important segment,” he said. Further confirmation of the importance of high-tech
business to the air cargo industry is provided by Roland Bischoff, head of global air freight at international forwarder Kuehne + Nagel. “The high-tech market has been – and continues to be – vitally important to the air freight industry. The products involved, whether the raw materials for manufacturing or finished goods for end users, are high in value and therefore need to reach their intended market places as quickly and efficiently as possible,” he stated. Commenting specifically on the importance of that sector when it came to Chinese air freight business, Bischoff added: “Since China today depends increasingly on high-tech related products for its continued growth and development, the importance of high-tech traffic in that region’s air cargo market has also grown.”
14 AIR LOGISTICSCHINA
B2C SERVICES Craig Corry, vice president technology, DHL global customer solutions, Asia Pacific, highlights another trend which, he said, is generating growing volumes of high-tech business for that company’s air express services – a “huge” demand for B2C (business to consumer) services within the Asian region. Corry said the high-tech products involved are
Corry sees a swing from the use of bulk-
consolidated transport to an express mode
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