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Issue 7 2013 Freight Business Journal FROM THE EDITOR


Ask many people involved in European shipping or freight how they are faring in the recession and you oſten get an interesting answer: ‘Business is great, but almost none of our new traffic is to or from our home continent.’ The past few years has seen a great rise in what we used to call cross-trades – from Africa to South America, or India to Russia or from one Latin American country to another. Many of the larger forwarders and shipping lines used to have a small, and largely


By Chris Lewis


neglected cross trades department; now, for many of them, it is a major and growing part of their business. The rest of the world is throwing off its protectionist shackles and learning the benefits of global trade. Of course, many of these ‘new’ trades have grown from almost nothing and they will


remain relatively small compared with the major Asia to Europe and Asia to North America flows for the foreseeable future. Fortunately, though, there is now a cascade of suitably- sized ships in the 2,000-8.000teu range that are increasingly being displaced by the new generation of 10,000teu-plus monsters coming into service on the major east-west routes. What happens when this supply of tonnage has been absorbed by the market and older


vessels have been scrapped? Will the south-to-south crosstrades have grown to the point where they too demand mega-ships. Possibly in a few cases, at least where India or China are part of the equation, but unlikely in many others where port constraints as well as the traffic on offer will play a part. The next generation of container vessels may well be smaller, but smarter ships.


Something similar happened in the aviation world around a decade ago. At the time that Airbus announced that it was to build the next generation of super-large aircraſt, out- jumboing the jumbo jet, I asked a Boeing spokesman if the US giant was worried aboiut being leſt behind in the race to produce ever-larger aircraſt. ‘Oh no,’ was the reply. ‘We see the future as a much more diffuse network of routes, flying to and from local airports rather than these inefficient major hub airports.’ The result was the 787 Dreamliner, arguably one of the most sophisticated medium-


sized planes in the sky, even if its debut hasn’t exactly been free of teething troubles. But then the same could be said of the Airbus 380.


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Education. Almost everyone agrees that it’s a great idea in principle, but many are not so sure about the practice. My own now rather distant memories of my schooldays was of boning up the the names of now otherwise forgotten French inter-war prime ministers or trying to spell the names of obscure alcohols and esters – fine for the 0.0001% of the population who do become experts on France in the 1930s or the somewhat larger proportion who make it as industrial chemists, but sod-all use to the rest of us. I don’t subscribe to the utilitarian view of education, but with the vast benefit of hindsight,


how much of my education was of any practical use? Writing and spelling, certainly, though I was one of the lucky ones who was already halfway there before entering infant school, thank to my mother who thought a spell of home tuition at age three wouldn’t come amiss. Arithmetic is handy for almost all of us, if only for adding up darts scores and working out betting odds. French comes in handy for the odd shopping trip to Calais or conversing with les parents of my Other Half. Geography would have been nice, but you couldn’t do that at my school if you did French – at a stroke eliminating one or other subject that might conceivably have been useful for a career involving freight. Employers are wont to complain, with good causew, about the amount of time and effort


they have to put in in remedying the deficiencies of the British education system which doesn’t seem geared at all to turning out the sort of well-rounded, multi-skilled individuals vital to our industry.


Just what are US politicians playing at? Everyone knew that the two political parties had to agree a budget eventually, but that didn’t stop the shenannigans in early October, when essential government services had to be shut down while the political horse-trading went on. Fortunately, it didn’t affect many of the services used by the freight industry too badly, like customs or air traffic control, but woe betide any businessman whose passport had run out at the vital moment. Talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the EU – seen


by many as offering the best hope of permanently banishing all thoughts of recession - also had to be put on hold in early October as non-essential US Government functions were


///NEWS


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


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shut down and a planned visit by US officials to Brussels scheduled for the middle of the month was postponed. The economists say that the debacle should cause no more than a blip in the US


economic recovery – but it’s hardly the greatest advert for the world’s one remaining superpower. Somehow, I can’t imagine the Chinese acting in the same way.


Guest editorial from ASM chairman Peter MacSwiney


Were the UK to cut itself off from Europe could we still agree free trade agreements? For example consider the recent agreement with the US - do we think we could have done better if the UK negotiated direct – who knows? The trouble with these agreements is that there are numerous elements to consider other than paying duty. In addition to tariff barriers we would need to look at harmonisation such as the same documentation, standard messaging systems, security regimes, discriminatory practices, bi-lateral investment protection and IP protection – and that’s just for starters. Now one might think that’s a lot of difficult issues and rightly ask: “Could the UK


deal with that effectively?” It may be better to influence Europe rather than fight a ‘lonely corner’. Bear in mind that with Europe it will always be compromise but is that compromise worth it? The other question worth considering is if the UK stands outside Europe on


negotiation, where’s the clout? If the US for instance, wanted to dig their heels in over an issue the UK would find it hard to resist but from within Europe the UK is part of a significant trading block with some significant clout. But crazy EU laws shouldn’t really be driving the UK parliament. The forwarding


business and global traders would probably do better ‘in’ than ‘out’ but as an independent country would we do better at making and defending our own laws? The true answer at this stage is the vast majority know far less about the entire


convoluted EU-question than they think they do. Rabid cries of ‘Leave the EU immediately!’ are not helpful. Inherent prejudices obscure the issues. The UK was for many years, poor at negotiating within the EU and its lack of presence in Brussels 10 years ago was shocking. The UK representatives did not get involved early enough to impact laws, they simply adopted an attitude of ‘sit back and wait’. The problem now is we are paying the price for that inaction.


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