FBJ 4 FREIGHT BUSINESS JOURNAL


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Issue 2 2014 Freight Business Journal FROM THE EDITOR


There has lately been a flurry of popular books about deepsea shipping. These appear to be the latest fruits of a PR offensive mounted by the container operators a few years ago who, mindful of the fact that the Great British Public haven’t a clue about how the vast majority of their soapdishes, iPads or car tyres reach them all the way from China, decided that they needed to up their public profile a little, albeit under very carefully controlled conditions. (The new open-door policy doesn’t extend to things like rates, schedule plans and other matters that might conceivably be of use to the lines’ actual customers.) So far, we’ve had Deep Sea and Foreign Going by Rose George and Down to the Sea in Ships by Horatio Clare. Rose George, who seems to have developed a taste for this sort of thing (or maybe she got an offer she couldn’t refuse from her publisher) is promising us Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry in September, if the Amazon website is to be believed. The lines’ efforts also resulted in the TV programme, The Box, in which the wanderings of a BBC-branded container were tracked around the globe. I’ve only had time to read Deep Sea and Foreign Going so far. Rose George discourses vividly on the trials and tribulations of seafarers, modern and historical, mostly set against the background of a Maersk Line voyage the author undertook from Europe to the Far East accompanied by a Geordie captain, a crew mainly from the developing world and cook who appeared to have been selected more for her willingness to tolerate the working conditions than her culinary prowess. What it teaches us, among other things, is that one of the biggest enemies of the modern seafarer is not pirates, or heavy seas, but boredom. Ask a merchant seaman: ‘Where are you going next?’ and the answer is, essentially: ‘A grey port surrounded by a chain-link fence.’ Maersk is one of the better employers – otherwise they would surely never have agreed to recruiting a writer as a supernumerary crew member – but many other shipping firms have working conditions that would shame even the meanest of back-street sweatshop operators. The shroud of secrecy has suited many in the industry over the years.


By Chris Lewis


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Things move slowly in the world of shipping, but now, with the Spring, come the first signs of change. Evergreen, that one-time scourge of the conference lines and – the three P3 candidates apart – the last truly independent major force on global trades, has announced that it is to link arms with the CYMK alliance, albeit only on the Asia/Europe trades. Meanwhile, the G6 operators have announced the next stage of their cooperation, on the Transatlantic and Asia-North America West Coast routes. We will though have to wait a couple of years yet for the UK port situation to settle down. London Gateway is only just beginning to come on stream and completion of the first phase of the Liverpool2 development is still well over a year away. And of course we still don’t know when, and whether the P3 alliance between three of the biggest remaining independents will come about. So there’s still plenty for the pundits to speculate on.


Luſthansa is one of a very select group of airlines to have invested in new freighter aircraſt, having just taken delivery of two shiny new Boeing 777 freighters, its first all-cargo planes for over 13 years, with more to come this year and next. It was slightly strange, then, to hear Luſthansa Cargo executive board member Dr Andreas Otto deliver a warning at a recent conference in Frankfurt that there are question-marks over the long-term viability of freighters. Essentially, he said, if the market wants ready availability of such aircraſt long term, it is going to have to pay for it, he said. Airfreight is an unusual market in that – ro ro ferries apart – it is the last mode of transport on earth to practice large scale mixed-mode operation, carrying bellyhold cargo and passengers on the same planes. That means that there is oſten a ready supply of cargo capacity on busy passenger routes, especially the passenger versions of the B777, which can carry almost as much bellyhold cargo as an old-generation narrow body full freighter. This has pushed freighters further and further into a market niche, carrying freight that is too large or too hazardous for passenger bellyholds, and perhaps providing supplementary capacity at busy times. Apart from the express integrators and some of the more specialist operations catering to the heavyliſt market, few of the world’s all-cargo operations are financially healthy at the moment. Aeroflot and JAL have dropped their freighters, while IAG Cargo/BA has offloaded its leased operation in favour of a space-share on Qatar Airways. Could Luſthansa’s B777F be the last in their line?


First there was the International Road Transport Union’s letter to President Putin warning of the consequences if the impasse over the TIR system was allowed to continue. Later, in February, no less a person than President Obama issued an Executive Order, from his Air


///OPINION


FBJ is now 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 Indian Sub-continent, Italy, Carribean and will include a


Multimodal Preview. There will also be our regular IT Section and news pages. For further details contact: John Saunders - +44 (0) 151 427 6800 john.saunders@fj-online.com


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Force One jet, pushing through a plan to streamline the export and import process and create a ‘single window’ for international trade in the US. Right now, though, it’s fair to assume that both leaders have other things on their mind.


If you’d asked most people a few months ago, which eastern country is the most westward- looking, the likely candidate for EU membership, the answer would very likely have been Ukraine – which just goes to show how wrong general perceptions can be, sometimes. Not so long ago, Kiev seemed all set to sign a pact strengthening its ties with western Europe and it was certainly on Brussels’ list of countries with membership potential, even if accession to the EU was some way off. As we all now know, events there very quickly spiralled out of control, triggered by street protests and intervention from Ukraine’s big eastern neighbour. It turned out that Ukraine was a much more complex and divided country than the majority of us realised. In the West, we’re now used, for the most part, to reasonably tidy linguistic and ethnic borders. But there are manyUkrainians whose mother tongue is Russian and whose allegiances are not necessarily clear-cut. At the time of writing, Russian troops were on Ukrainian soil, posing the rest of the world with an immediate dilemma. The question now is what is to be done about the growing crisis. Many people have suggested that, if push comes to shove, trade sanctions should be imposed against Moscow. Sanctions are oſten seen as a ‘soſt’ alternative to more hard line action like – heaven forbid – military intervention. As this column stated in the last issue of FBJ, trade sanctions can be a very effective and, contrary to popular opinion, reasonably quick means of achieving results. The problem in this particular instance is the Russians’ huge economic clout; there is a huge amount of Russian investment in the UK and the rest of the world and it is also a major energy supplier to the rest of the world. Trade sanctions could be one of those punishments that ‘hurts me as much as it hurts you’.


The recent by independent chief inspector of borders and immigration John Vine, on the Border Force’s freight activities tells an all-too-familair tale of conscientious frontline staff let down by poor communications between government agencies, coupled with a lack of resources. In these financially challenging times, no arm of public service can be wholly immune from Government cutbacks but skimping on the means to ensure that the UK’s exports and imports run smoothly could be well be a case of false economy. It is bizarre that the Government is exhorting small firms to export, but then cutting back on the department that is supposed to help them do so. Moreover, there are potential security implications too, not to mention potential losses to the exchequer from increased opportunities for smuggling and other illegal activities. This is surely one case of spoiling the ship for a ha’pennyworth of tar.


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