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Issue 8 2014 - Freight Business Journal From the Editor


Fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100 to avoid


global warming


reaching dangerous levels, says the UN In t er g o vernmental Panel on Climate Change. Much of the report focuses on coal burned for electricity generation, but if the authors mean what they say, presumably all forms of fossil fuel used directly or indirectly in transport would also be banned if the coal of zero greenhouse gas emissions is to be reached before large parts of the globe end up under water. Think of the implications – no marine oil for ships of course, but no diesel either, not even the low-sulphur versions now being phased in for the north European Emissions Control Area. Unless scientists can come up with a photovoltaic aircraft, aviation could become a thing of the past, unless we are prepared to give over millions of acres of agricultural land to growing bio-aviation fuel. Trucks would be able to go no further than their solar-charged batteries could carry them – and even electric trains could be stuck in the sidings unless juice can be extracted from solar or wind power, or the carbon from coal-powered stations effectively captured. This of course is the doomsday scenario. While 86 years into the future is not that far ahead in human existence terms, there is still time for science to come up with solutions to many of these problems. What could happen in our own lifetimes, though, is that increasingly punitive taxes will be levied on fossil fuels, partly to encourage development of alternatives, though the more cynical of of us might believe that it will be a very handy way for governments to fill their depleted coffers.


By Chris Lewis


Meanwhile, the industry has a more pressing environmental concern – the new sulphur emissions control area, which comes into force in British and North Sea waters on 1 January. While the industry has been slow to announce what the new surcharges will be, it is pretty certain that freight rates can only head in one direction as a result of the new rules – upwards. It will also lead to a redrawing of the Channel and North Sea shipping map. Several short sea ferry and ro ro services have been withdrawn – in fact, there has been an unprecedented number of service withdrawals in the past few weeks, including the last independent LD Lines service, the historic Harwich- Esbjerg route and the DFDS Tilbury Gothenburg service. Doubtless, some routes were already teetering on the edge of closure and the new emission rules was only the straw that broke the camel’s back.


///OPINION


FBJ is 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 Pallet Networks, East Europe and Baltic and Transport Security.


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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or computer software – so airfreight and express might be the main beneficiaries.


IAG cargo – the joint company that runs airfreight operations at British Airways, Iberia and Vuelling – has brought a welcome breath of fresh air with its new CargoConnector product. With its simple tariff structure and emphasis on speedy delivery, it is in a sense bringing airfreight back to its roots, doing what planes do best – moving relatively small pieces of freight quickly and reliably. Other carriers too are putting more emphasis on ‘express’ and premium’ services, as well as specialist


temperature controlled products.


Again, it may not be wise to put two and two together and make five, but the new sulphur rules might be a factor in the modest, though welcome revival in rail freight through the Channel Tunnel. It’s not every day that a brand new intermodal rail service is announced, by a company that has until now been involved only in domestic freight. No doubt, the experimental reduction in Channel Tunnel access charges for freight has been a bigger factor in the new services. What shippers would like to see is for the reduction to be made permanent. Rail needs a lot of investment in wagons and terminals – and the industry will need to be certain that the reduced charges are here to stay before committing itself.


With mid-term elections in the US out of the way, there is a real prospect that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP) between the EU and the US could be signed next year. True, it is a complex treaty, there are many opposing interests to be assuaged and past experience has taught us that such pacts are never signed until they’re signed, to state the obvious. But assuming that the TTIP does not get bogged down and becomes reality sometime within the current decade, what are the implications for Transatlantic freight? In the 1980s, the North Atlantic trade was Europe’s premier trade. The surge in Asian and Chinese manufacturing-exporting was still some time in the future and with the US forces’ strong presence in Europe, there was plenty of military kit to be moved back and forth. In the modern era, the trade flows are less obvious. We will probably still buy the vast bulk of our cheaper manufactured goods from China or possibly ‘near- souce’ origins like Turkey. We might be able to sell a bit more Stilton cheese or Heineken beer to the Americans than at present, and it’s possible that European consumers will get a taste for Fruity Pebbles or aerosol cheese. More typical traded items might be human genomes, computer chips


The


successful carriers of the future will be those that add value, not carry great volumes. Somehow, the airfreight industry has in the past few years lost sight of what it is actually for. Consolidated or deferred airfreight often spends more time sitting in sheds or on the tarmac than actually flying. Getting freight out of handling sheds at major airports can take days, with the result that journey times can often be measured in days rather than hourse. Now though, with the tightening of airfreight capacity and the retirement – long overdue, many will say – of underutilised freighter fleets, there appears to have been a rethink. Less freight might be flying, especially as shippers pursue green and cost-cutting agendas, but the freight that is in the air is nowadays genuinely in a hurry.


Our redoubtable IT correspondent Marcia MacLeod retires at the end of this year. No longer will the columns of FBJ resound to her often trenchant opinions on information and technology in the freight industry. Or in some cases, the lack of technology – getting the various actors involved in the airfreight industry to agree on a workable way forward has so far proved insurmountable, though the issue has generated any amount of conferences and workshops around the world. Still, IT has changed the face of the industry as we know it. I don’t think Marcia will mind if I suggest that when she started writing about freight, computers hadn’t progressed beyond the secretary’s word processor sitting in the corner of an office and, for the bigger concerns, a vast monolith churning out yards and yards of print-out, much of it of dubious utility and comprehensibility. We may curse computers much of the time – I often think that we succeed in producing each FBJ despite, not because of modern technology. Much as we would like to escape them, most of the time, they are an inescapable fact of modern business life.


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