LOGISTICS SOLUTIONS FOR DELIVERING AFRICA’S FUTURE

Air freight rates are expected to stay elevated through the first quarter of 2022, while forwarders are also predicting a shortage of capacity, particularly out of China. The market is currently swamped with Covid tests going to Europe from Asia, which has triggered yet another rise in rates, according to one Shanghai-based forwarder. “There is huge demand from Europe to get finished goods from factories. It’s like what happened early last year for PPE, with all buyers needing to fight to get the goods released in the quickest way. Factories have full orderbooks for the next couple of months, so it doesn’t sound like the peak time will soften soon.” He added that as part stricter safety requirements, from January 1, the Chinese aviation authority will ban general cargo from passenger cabins.
Source: Voice of The Independent

Media attention is focusing on the arrival in North Europe of Evergreen’s 23,992 TEUs 400m long and over 60m large EVER ACE, which has stolen the crown to become the world’s largest container-ship . Pre-pandemic, carriers that did not keep raising their ship’s capacity were unable to compete on unit costs. But now freight rates are higher and carriers is better health, more versatile vessels which can deployed on a number of different trades and lanes are the new fashion.

Source: Voice of the Independent

The “Brussels Express”, with a capacity of 15,000 TEU – the first large container ship in the world to have been converted to gas propulsion – sailed into its home port of Hamburg for the first time. In September 2020, when it was still named the “Sajir”, the ship went into the Huarun Dadong Dockyard in Shanghai. There, all the preparations had already been made to have a floating crane hoist the 1,300-tonne LNG tank into the belly of the ship as well as to carry out other work related to the conversion. A retrofitting of this scale had never been done before and will now be tested  in real-world operation.

Source: GCC Ports

The sharp increase in demand has led to a shortage of containers across the world. Severe imbalances – such as with exports from Asia, but also owing to congestion in ports and delays in hinterland transports – are causing containers to be tied up in transit for considerably longer periods of time. More boxes are currently needed overall to manage the same transport volume: 80-60,000 TEU of standard containers are currently being produced and are scheduled to be delivered to shipping lines in Q3.

Source: GCC Ports