Newsletter – August 3, 2021

AIR FREIGHT UPDATES

DHL Express makes historic investment in all-electric freighters

aircargonews.net
DHL Express has ordered 12 fully electric freighter aircraft as it looks to create an electric express network and make a “pioneering step into a sustainable aviation future”.
The aircraft are Alice eCargo aircraft from Seattle-based manufacturer Eviation and will have a capacity of 1.2 tonnes and a range of 815 km (440 nautical miles).
They are due to enter the DHL Express fleet in 2024 and can be flown by a single pilot.
“We firmly believe in a future with zero-emission logistics,” said John Pearson, chief executive of DHL Express. “Therefore, our investments always follow the objective of improving our carbon footprint. Read more here.

Drone Delivery Canada receives domestic cargo license

insidelogistics.ca
Drone Delivery Canada Corp. (DDC) has become the first publicly traded drone delivery company to be granted a  domestic cargo licence under the Canada Transportation Act (CTA) and Air Transport Regulations (Canada).
This licence, normally issued to airlines that provide passenger or cargo services, is a critical step to the continued expansion and scaling of DDC operations. Read more here.

OCEAN FREIGHT UPDATES

Schedule Reliability at Low Level with No Improvement Forecast

maritime-executive.com
Schedule reliability in the container shipping industry has fallen dramatically in 2021 in part due to the strong volumes, backlogs at the container terminals, stress on the supply chain, and port congestion. Despite the efforts of the carriers and ports, many believe that performance and the issues confronting the container shipping sector are unlikely to improve for months or even years.
Sea-Intelligence published its most recent update of the Global Liner Performance report showing that schedule reliability on the major container routes has stabilized at a low level. Analyzing schedule reliability across 34 different trades lanes and 60-plus carriers, Sea-Intelligence says overall reliability has been “hovering around the 40 percent mark since March 2021. In June 2021, schedule reliability improved marginally by 0.8 percentage points.”  Read more here.

Shipping braces as China goes into lockdown mode

splash247.com
Shipping will need to start to make contingency plans if cases of Covid-19 continue to escalate in China, the world’s most important nation for shipping movements.
The delta variant has broken through the country’s virus defences, which are some of the strictest in the world, and reached nearly half of China’s 32 provinces in just two weeks. While the overall number of infections — more than 360 so far — is still lower than Covid resurgences elsewhere, the wide spread indicates that the variant is moving quickly with many millions of Chinese now in lockdown. Read more here.

Yang Ming launches extra loaders on transpacific and Asia-Europe trades

theloadstar.com
Yang Ming today launches extra loader services on the transpacific and Asia-Europe tradelanes, to meet shippers’ needs amid tight capacity.
The company said: “This will relieve the capacity crunch provide customers with more immediate and faster services.
“The current market is affected by Covid-19 pandemic, which has affected the efficiency of terminal operations, causing congestion in major container ports in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.” Read more here.

Maersk Raises its 2021 Profit Forecast by Another $5 Billion: Best three months in company history!

seanews.com.tr
Number-one ocean carrier Maersk is having an exceptionally good year. With freight rates driven sky-high by COVID-related demand and disruption, Maersk has reported some of the best quarterly earnings in its history, and it has raised its outlook for the rest of the year. Read more here.

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS – GOVERNMENT UPDATES

COVID threatens Chinese exports as US struggles to restock inventories

freightwaves.com
Could trans-Pacific trade face a repeat of June’s Yantian port closure?
U.S. import demand is stronger than ever as inventory-to-sales ratios remain painfully low. Yet there’s rising risk to shipping volumes on the supply side of the equation: Most American containerized imports come from China and elsewhere in Asia, where the delta variant is spreading.
There were two big plunges in trans-Pacific volume last year: one supply-side driven, when China locked down in the first quarter; another demand-side driven, when the U.S. locked down in the second quarter.
There appears to be virtually no chance of another major U.S. lockdown that would impair shipping demand. Not so in China, where lockdowns are rigorously enforced even when reported cases are very low. Read more here.