8


NEWS


New group to take eFreight to next level


A consortium of innovative businesses, government authorities and research institutes has been set up to improve supply chain visibility and trade compliance by combining eFreight and eCustoms.


The CASSANDRA project


(www.cassandra-project.eu) is developing a data-sharing concept and involves 27 industry leaders and is receiving funding from the European Commission’s Seventh Framework programme for


Security. It includes leading freight and IT companies such as DHL, Kühne+Nagel, GS1, IBM, Customs and other border inspection agencies, along with European research institutes, port communities and trading partners in Rotterdam, Bremerhaven, Barcelona and Setúbal.


The project’s goal is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of cross border inspections as well as to improve supply chain visibility


and business execution. Currently, government authorities perform risk assessments using the traditional Transaction Based Audit


approach, with each


cross-border trade transaction inspected individually, based on declaration data submitted to authorities. Cassandra aims to bring a Risk Based Audit approach, identifying secure and known container flows, based on System Based Auditing (SBA). Under SBA,


government authorities use data and risk assessment of businesses for their own risk assessment, assessing processes and protocols using accessible business data.


Cassandra would achieve interoperability of different systems by using IT innovations to form a data pipeline, so that secure and reliable data can be shared across the supply chain. Case studies have been set up for three global trade lanes, China-EU, EU-US and EU-Africa.


BIFA forces IATA into U-turn on guarantees


The European freight industry has successfully challenged a blanket requirement for forwarders to provide financial assessments and bank guarantees in order to operate IATA’s Cargo Accounts Settlement System (CASS). According to the British International Freight Association, which played a leading role in the negotiations, the requirement for financial


assessments had largely been dormant. However, the global financial crisis sparked an about-turn by IATA. One BIFA member was asked for a £400,000 guarantee.


But at a meeting of the European Air Cargo Programme (EACP) Joint Council in February, a small working group was set up, consisting of forwarder representatives from BIFA, FIATA and IATA to consider


changes to the financial criteria. BIFA’s director - trade services, John O’Connell, who led the trade association’s efforts on this initiative, said: that it was “intolerable” that forwarders were faced having to pay hefty guarantees, even if their CASS payments had been up to date. He stated: “Our aim was to ensure that the need for forwarders, which complied with the terms of the


Brittany supports match girls


With growing interest in the 2012 Olympics, Brittany Ferries are supporting the GBR Match Race Girls team of Lucy and Kate Macgregor and Annie Lush, who are hoping to be selected to represent Britain in Weymouth in 2012. Based in Poole – one of Brittany’s home ports - they won the 2010 Ladies Match Racing World Championships and are now competing in the


ISAF Match Race class in various World Cup events with a view to maintaining their hopes of qualifying for the 2012 Olympic event. They were recently runners up at the Sail for Gold event in Weymouth and will be taking part in the Olympic Test event at the same venue in August. The discipline of Match Racing calls for some very special skills, as the competitors are required to


go ‘head to head’ in what can best be described as a series of duels on water to determine the winner. The


team recently visited the Brittany Ferries freighter Cotentin, which operates the regular service to Santander as well as on the Poole/Cherbourg route.


www.matchracegirls.com Change at the top at BIFA


The British International Freight Association (BIFA) has appointed a new president and a new national chairman and vice- chairman.


Sir Peter Bottomley, MP is


BIFA’s new president succeeding Lord Fowler. Born in 1944, he has been a member of parliament since 1975 and is currently MP for Worthing West and was knighted in the recent New Years Honours list. Sir Peter, 66, served in Margaret Thatcher’s government


between 1984 and 1990, and was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Employment, Roads Minister in the Department of Transport and then Minister for environment and agriculture in the Northern Ireland Office. BIFA director general Peter Quantrill commented: “We are very pleased that Sir Peter has agreed to become our new president. With his broad range of external interests, political acumen, and significant


experience of the legislative process across the parliamentary spectrum, I’m certain that BIFA and its members will benefit from his appointment” Steve Parker, head of customs and brokerage in Europe at DHL Global Forwarding, is the new BIFA national chairman, moving from his


current role of vice


chairman. He succeeds Andrew Melton, who has held the position for the past two years. Parker says he has his old headmaster to thank for a


career that spans almost four decades in airfreight. Aged just 16 when he left school in the early 1970s, he was advised by the headmaster to consider airfreight as a career. He secured a position with Pandair and 38 years later, works for the company which bought Danzas. The latter had earlier bought AEI, which in turn had purchased Pandair.


Carson McMullan of All-Route Shipping (NI) is the new BIFA vice-chairman.


CASS agreement, to provide expensive and cumbersome bank guarantees, was lifted.” The change came into effect


on 1 July. BIFA director general Peter Quantrill said: “Yet again, our members’ voice has been heard


on the international


freight industry stage thanks to BIFA’s proactive role in tackling issues and setting the international agenda for freight.”


ISSUE 4 2011 ROUND-UP: AIRFREIGHT & EXPRESS


Luxembourg-based all-cargo airline Cargolux has signed an equity partnership with Qatar Airways, with the latter taking a 35% stake in the European carrier. It marks the end of the Luxembourg’s government’s role as a shareholder in the airline and allows other state-controlled shareholders to sell or reduce their stake.


DHL has opened a gateway at Mohammed V International Airport, in Casablanca, Morocco. The €5.5m 6,800 m2 terminal includes a cold chain facility and a dedicated strategic parts centre and is connected to DHL’s network by a daily overnight flight to and from Paris.


Low cost Malaysian carrier AirAsia X is to switch its UK base from Stansted to Gatwick from 24 October. The carrier is currently operating six times a week to Kuala Lumpur, with onward connections to Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand, for cargo as well as passengers.


Emirates will operate flights four times a week from its Dubai hub to Baghdad from 13 November, its second destination in Iraq. The carrier already flies four times a week to Basra.


Dubai-based GSA Global Investments has acquired a 51% controlling interest in Togo-based cargo airline Africa West with logistics veteran Issa Baluch as chairman. A new board of directors also includes Kannan Nachiappan, Jassem Haider, Zein Baluch, Claude Sitterlin, and Yannick Erbs, who retains his position as CEO of Africa West.


Aer Lingus Cargo has appointed Peter O’Neill as director cargo, replacing Remo Hanselmann who is returning to Zurich where he joins Hans Mars, the Communications Agency for the Air Cargo Industry. O’Neill joined Aer Lingus in 1989 and has held a number of key senior commercial and operational management positions.


The Competition Commission confirmed on 19 July that BAA will be required to sell Stansted Airport followed by Edinburgh or Glasgow Airport, confirming its earlier provisional view published in March. The sales process will start within the next three months. BAA has already sold Gatwick airport.


Deutsche Post DHL is running a disaster-preparedness programme at Dhaka and Chittagong airports in Bangladesh in June. The aim is to prepare airports and personnel for the post-disaster logistics situations and to improve local logistics capacities so that bottlenecks at disaster- site airports can be avoided should huge volumes of incoming relief goods arrive. The company has already run similar training in Indonesia and Nepal.


ROUND-UP: ROAD


The Port of Dover and ferry operators P&O Ferries, DFDS Seaways and SeaFrance are calling on the Government and the Highways Agency to move quickly on road repairs near the port. They fear that repairs on the Roundhill Viaduct, on the A20 between Folkestone and Dover could lead to worse congestion than when Operation Stack has to be deployed during weather or strike disruptions.


The European Commission has published a technical revision of legislation for a new satellite-equipped version of the digital tachograph on 19 July. The new devices would be less easy to manipulate and it would also be possible to target higher-risk vehicles with fewer routine checks of other vehicles, says the Commission. However, even if the new regulation is adopted in 2012, the new devices will not be on the market before the end of 2017.


The Dutch Government has given longer and heavier vehicles indefinite permission to operate on the country’s main roads. Trucks up to 25.25 metres long and weighing up to 60 tonnes had been operating on an experimental basis.


The Eurovignette Directive, ratified by the European parliament on 8 June could add around 2p a mile to transport operator’ costs but little of the money raised will be spent on improving the transport system, complains the Road Haulage Association. The new agreement will increase charges for HGVs using European motorways and charge for their so-called ‘external costs’ such as noise and pollution. Member states will also have the powers to apply a congestion premium, along with mark-ups for vehicles crossing areas of environmental sensitivity.


Wincanton has sold its German Road activities and businesses in Central and Eastern Europe to Raben group and logistics operations in the Netherlands to JCL Transport und Logistik. Wincanton German Road operates from 16 locations across Germany and Raben will also acquire Wincanton’s businesses in Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia for €36.0m. JCL will acquire the Wincanton logistics operations in five locations, including the international transport hub in ‘s-Heerenberg, for €10.5m.


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