FBJ 4 FREIGHT BUSINESS JOURNAL


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CIRCULATION


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Issue 6 2013 FROM THE EDITOR


Does the UK’s shipping industry hide its light under a bushel? That is certainly the opinion of ABP chief executive James Cooper. London Shipping Week (LSW), which celebrated and recognised the contribution of the sector to the British economy in mid-September, certainly aims to correct that and to alter the perception that the industry is somehow no longer important. As he told a LSW gathering at Trinity House in London – which also,


By Chris Lewis


incidentally, marked the 175th anniversary of the port of another great south of England port, Southampton – ABP alone pumps in £6 billion to the economy and employs an astonishing 100,000 people directly and indirectly. Even more significantly, it’s also a major contributor to the astonishing recent


export success of British car makers, including Jaguar Landrover which until recently was considering mothballing a major plant to taking on thousands of new employees. Perhaps the maritime and car industries in this country both suffer from the


perception that, because they not necessarily UK-owned, they are no longer important to the economy. It’s been a while since the P&O Containers logo was painted out and replaced by Maersk’s blue and in a way it’s a pity that there is no longer any deepsea British container line to fly the flag for us in foreign parts. But for all that, the industry is a vital contributor to the country’s prosperity, whoever the ships belong to.


Back in the days of steam wagons and sailing ships when we started writing about freight (alright, we’re exaggerating slightly) the way a company described itself was a pretty good guide to what it actually did. Freight forwarders arranged the movement of cargo – by air, sea or truck, the


latter almost always actually operated by a third party. There were the road hauliers themselves, who actually provided and ran the hardware but didn’t get involved in the paperwork and other complexities of sending goods abroad. Pallet networks – domestic or foreign – weren’t even a gleam in Hilary Devey’s


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eye in those days, but there were a few firms that were involved in something mysterious called logistics (the term ‘distribution’ had only just gone out of fashion) which in those days was a purely domestic affair. If anyone professed to be a supply chain manager, we’d certainly never heard of them. Today, it’s all become a lot more complicated. We have hauliers and logistics


companies that have developed what are essentially freight forwarding arms. Many hauliers have also signed deals with partners in other countries, turning themselves into international operations in the process. Supply chain management has become an international science. And the pallet networks, having virtually saturated the UK market, are increasingly turning their attention to European or intra-European operations. This diffusion of the market, while occasionally confusing, could be good for


the customer if it leads to more competition. If David Cameron does succeed in turning us into a nation of exporters once again, there will be no lack of choice for getting goods abroad.


Finding out about overseas transport options can though still be a bit of a challenge. Recently, we did a bit of research for a family member who wanted to know thefreight transportation possibilities from western Europe to one of the central Asian ‘Stans’. In the West, we’ve quickly got used to the idea that the Internet is universal,


and that shipping schedules and names of truck hauliers are all available at the flick of a mouse. But you don’t have to move very far east and south for information to become a lot more sketchy. The information available on the websites of even quite large ferry operators in the Mediterranean is pretty poor, where they exist at all. And out East there is the added problem of translation from exotic languages and alphabets. We are not quite in the age of universal information yet; local knowledge still counts for a lot.


I had a bulk freight delivery to my door the other day courtesy of one of the pallet networks (a pallet-load of woodchips, since you ask). Nothing very


remarkable about that in these days of online ordering, but it got me thinking. In this case, the poor driver spent a good 15 minutes puffing and heaving


at a pallet that literally weighed a tonne with nothing more than a manual truck. He had by then raised the tail-lift so I was unable to get up to give him a hand, though Health & Safety regs no doubt would have disallowed that anyway. This was a new design of tail-lift, he told me, which incorporated a ‘lip’ to


prevent pallets crashing off the end of the truck – and a perfect example of how solving one problem immediately creates another. I wonder how many pallet delivery drivers are prematurely retired with musculoskeletal disorders? For all the technical wizardry of the internet, on-line tracking, transport


management software and so on, ultimately someone has got to hump often very heavy goods around.


///OPINION


FBJ has already become established as the only UK and one of the few pan-European Multimodal newspapers. The comments we have received prove there is still room for a hard copy publication with the freighting industry. You don’t have to look at a screen all day!


FBJ boasts the most informative and authoritative source of information with unrivalled in-depth knowledge of the rapidly changing freight business environment.


As the definitive publication within the sea, air, road and rail freight sectors, each issue includes regular news and analysis, in-depth coverage discovering the business decisions behind the news stories, shipper and exporter reports, opinion, geographical features, political and environmental issues.


If you have any stories or letters which should be of interest or any feedback on FBJ, please contact our editor Chris Lewis - +44 (0)208 6450666 chris.lewis@fj-online.com


next issue >> circulation >>


Our next issue will include features on Ireland, Iberia & Cool Logistics.


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