Newsletter: February 22, 2022

AIR FREIGHT UPDATES

China’s air cargo volumes rebound

aircargonews.net
China’s air cargo volumes rebounded to near pre-pandemic levels in January, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), reported Xinhua, China’s state press agency.
The volume of cargo and mail transported by air was approximately 654,000 tonnes in January, or 97.3% of the amount recorded in the same period in 2019, said the CAAC.
The degree of recovery expanded 6.6 percentage points from December 2021, the administration said. Read more here.

OCEAN FREIGHT UPDATES

Narrow Window to Clear Congested Southern California Hinges on Demand Waning

gcaptain.com
The bottlenecked ports in Los Angeles face a narrow window between now and midyear to clear container backlogs before another import surge and union-contract talks threaten to stall progress moving record volumes of cargo through the busiest U.S. gateway for trade.
There are good operational reasons for optimism that L.A. and Long Beach will catch enough of a breather in the next four months. The number of inbound ships has fallen by about one-third since hitting an early-January peak of 109, stacks of long-dwelling containers are shrinking and omicron cases among dockworkers are fading. Read more here. 

Ambitious young liner Transfar now launches China-US east coast sailings

theloadstar.com
Alibaba-affiliated Transfar Shipping has started China-US east coast sailings, months after entering the liner sector with sailings to the west coast.
The 4,389 teu Zhong Gu Ji Lin picked up cargo from Qingdao, Shanghai and Ningbo and arrived in New York/New Jersey on 9 February, before heading to Charleston, Houston and is arriving at Freeport today to load empty containers before returning to China. Read more here (login required).

Cyber attack hits state-run terminal at India’s top container port

splash247.com
A state-run container terminal at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT), India’s busiest container port, has reportedly fallen victim to a cyber attack.
A suspected security breach of the management information system has rendered the Jawaharlal Nehru Container Terminal (JNPCT), the country’s first dedicated container terminal, prompting it to reroute one ship to other terminals, according to sources. The port authority could not immediately be reached for comment. Read more here. 

Is the container supply chain crisis nearing its end-game?

theloadstar.com
To understand the disruption facing the container shipping markets at present, it’s insufficient to simply focus on the vessels themselves. MSI’s latest estimates for containerised trade growth in 2021 were 6%, above fleet growth of 4.5%. A 1.5 percentage point differential between supply and demand is scarcely enough to justify charter rates for an elderly panamax vessel hitting six figures. Read more here (login required).

GROUND AND RAIL FREIGHT UPDATES

Shippers caught in a container trap

insidelogistics.ca
Shippers have seen a huge array of supply chain disruptions over the years, from labour standoffs, to blockades and fury of Mother Nature. But the havoc being wreaked on world trade and transportation over the past two years is unprecedented. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Bob Ballantyne, who spent 40 years with Canadian Pacific before being named president of the Freight Management Association of Canada in 2002. Read more here.

INTERNATIONAL  BUSINESS – GOVERNMENT UPDATES

 International working group targets potential collusion by competitors in supply and distribution of goods

canada.ca
News release
February 17, 2022 – GATINEAU, QC – Competition Bureau
The Competition Bureau has joined the competition authorities of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom in a new working group focussed on sharing information to identify and prevent potentially anticompetitive conduct in the global supply and distribution of goods.
The working group brings together the Bureau, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the New Zealand Commerce Commission and the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority. Read more here.