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FBJ 4 FREIGHT BUSINESS JOURNAL


CONTACTS SALES


JOHN SAUNDERS - PUBLISHER Tel: +44 (0)151 427 6800 Fax: +44 (0)151 427 1796 Mobile: +44 (0)7932 102026 john.saunders@f j-online.com


RAY GIRVAN Tel: +44 (0)1691 718 045


EDITORIAL


CHRIS LEWIS - EDITOR +44 (0)7778 106433


chris.lewis@f j-online.com MIKE BRYANT PHIL HASTINGS


CIRCULATION


Tel: +44 (0)151 427 6800 circulation@f j-online.com


By Chris Lewis


With freight rates going through the roof, global shortages of containers and ports at near- paralysis, these are nightmare times for shippers’. At the time of writing, rates from the Far East have soared to close on the $10,000 a box mark - and showing no sign of abating – and even then there is no guarantee that the container will actually be loaded or that it will get to the requested port without transhipment and further delay. The only people, probably, who can feel happy about the current situation are those whose pension funds are invested in any of the global liner shipping companies. Most are predicting strong growth in the fi rst half of this year. However, even their optimism needs to be tempered with caution. In shipping, boom can so quickly turn to bust. Hapag Lloyd, in announcing very strong expected growth in at least the fi rst part of 2021, warns that the market is subject to considerable uncertainty and volatility.


In the early part of 2021 there was a spate – well, a small handful – of freight forwarders and shipper groups taking matters into their own hands and organising their own ships to bring containers from the Far East to Europe, in a bid to beat the current problems and high costs of liner services. Those companies that FBJ has had a chance to talk to say that they have saved their customers money and, more importantly, time by doing so and they would be willing to repeat the experience if necessary. Will this lead to an upsurge in DIY container shipping and a serious erosion of liner operators’ profi ts? It’s unlikely. Chartering your own vessel in itself needs specialist expertise, while getting hold of the necessary boxes is an even greater challenge – bear in mind that the current problems are more due to a shortage of boxes than of vessel capacity. Only those forwarders with experience of organising ships for major projects have direct access to the necessary skills. None of the operators spoken to really expected DIY shipping to be more than a fl ash in the pan, though. For all the liner market’s current woes, in more normal times it is probably impossible to match the per-unit cost of a modern 19,000teu container vessel.


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Freight forwarders operating their own air freight capacity is a little more common; Panalpina and its successor DSV have operated regular chartered fl ights for many years, to name one example. Now though a shipping line has got in on the act, with CMA CGM announcing a new specialised arm that will initially fl y four Airbus 330 freighters under a contract arrangement. While shipping lines and airlines sharing a common ownership are not unheard of - AP Moller-Maersk had a Maersk Air arm until the early years of this century, for example – it is possibly the fi rst instance of a shipping line getting directly involved in the operation of a major freighter fl eet. Truly the boundaries between airlines, shipping lines, forwarders and logistics companies are becoming blurred these days.


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Another phenomenon of the times is the recent increase in direct ro ro and container shipping routes between Ireland and the Continent, this time because of the customs problems associated with the UK’s Brexit. Quite a number of ferry operators have introduced new routes or enhanced existing ones and there have also been a few additional short sea container services. This might well be a longer-lived phenomenon, however. Besides the problems brought about by Brexit – which may get worse or better as time goes on – there are other forces at work pushing the industry towards longer sea routes. These include the shortage of drivers and the desire by companies to cut their carbon emissions, both of which favour putting a trailer on a boat for as great a distance as possible rather than have it towed by a diesel- guzzling tractor unit. We’re not really in the crystal ball game at FBJ, but I would predict that quite a bit of the traffi c that has deserted the UK landbridge will never return.


You’ve got to hand it to the Belgians for their brilliant masterstroke that has created Europe’s largest container port. Simply by declaring that the country’s two biggest maritime hubs, Zeebrugge and Antwerp, were part of the same port ‘system’, dubbed Antwerp-Bruges, they have leapfrogged Rotterdam, and further distanced themselves from the likes of Hamburg, Bremen or London, with none of that dreary pouring of concrete or even more


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


As the defi nitive 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@f j-online.com


next issue >> Pharma and Italy.


circulation >> Our next issue will include features on: North-west England,


For further details contact: John Saunders - +44 (0) 151 427 6800 john.saunders@f j-online.com


To guarantee your personal copy of FBJ please register by emailing


your details to circulation@f j-online.com or fax back the address cover sheet included with this issue.


tedious environmental hearings. Could other ports copy them and create their own super-hubs at the stroke of a pen? Rotterdam and Amsterdam; Hamburg and Bremen; or even Felixstowe-London- Southampton? All of them, from a physical proximity point of view, have as great a claim to be viewed as a contiguous whole as the Belgian duo. So far, though, FBJ’s own enquiries have not revealed any great enthusiasm for the idea.


On the evidence available so far, at least some traders are having severe diffi culties with the post-Brexit trading regime. As widely predicted, a system designed to cope with the demands of deep-sea trade where there is generally weeks of notice before the arrival of shipments is not up to the demands of a just-in-time supply chain. A couple of Parliamentary committees learned in February that many companies in the food and fi sheries trade have had their fi ngers badly burned with shipments being delayed and, in the worst cases, rejected and destroyed. The diffi culties of operating groupage services are also so great that few, if any, companies involved in the fresh food tradehave even attempted it. However, the ability to move smaller loads frequently is an important part of the modern supply chain, so this facility will be sorely missed. The problems are likely to get worse as the UK introduces full import controls from April onwards; so far it is exporters to Europe that have taken the hit. As a couple of witnesses to the committees suggested, what is probably needed are customs bonded groupage depots on both sides of the Channel, as existing before the Single European Market was set up in 1993. A bit Back to the Future maybe, but it might be the only way to keep things moving effi ciently.


The list of eight freeports revealed by the Chancellor on Budget day didn’t contain too many surprises – the country’s main sea gateways such as Felixstowe/Harwich, Liverpool, the Humber, the Solent, Thames and Teesside were all included. The two wildcards were Plymouth – not a major freight port these days – and East Midlands, the sole air gateway. The latter begs the question why other air hubs such as Heathrow and Manchester were not included – possibly because they don’t fulfi l the economic neediness criteria, though that is now questionable given the near collapse in passenger volumes. And if airports were to be included, why not the major inland ports such as those that have sprung up in the Midlands or South Yorkshire? Still, the initial eight are only a start and it is to be hoped that others will join their ranks in due course.


Issue 2 2021 - Freight Business Journal From the Editor


///NEWS


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 within the freighting industry. You don’t have to look at a screen all day!


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