What a sight here yesterday at Heathrow. The Royal Air Force (RAF) Fly Past celebrations which was displayed throughout London and parts of Surrey. We were lucky enough here at Sandford Freight UK to see some of the #RAF100 planes.
Congratulations to the RAF on 100 years.
Our general manager Darren Morris will be attending the GFFG conference in Bangkok, Thailand. We look forward to connecting with fellow members of the GFFG between the 17th May 2018 to 20th May 2018.
See you there.
A little update – There will be a “Pre-Easter Cargo Peak” which usually will affect the industry two weekends prior to Good Friday. This notice is just to make all conscious of the projected cargo peak. Here are some dates to keep in mind;
Good Friday: 30th March 2018
Two weeks prior to Good Friday: 16th March 2018
March 2018;
A-Days: 17th, 18th, 24th & 25th
B-Days: 21st, 22nd, 29th, 31st
April 2018;
A-Days: 7th & 8th
B-Days: 1st April
Be aware that over the next 3 weeks, higher than normal cargo volumes are forecast.
Good Friday – 30th March 2018
Easter Monday – 2nd April 2018
We would like to welcome our new road freight co-ordinator Jordan Elliott who joined us last month and has replaced Lesley Owen who has moved on to pursue a career outside of the freight industry. Welcome Jordan.
For any road freight enquiries please email j.elliott@sandforduk.com
Port congestion at SHANGHAI terminals has accelerated over the last few days and has now reached the point of critical. Services are now being impacted for all carriers, with a knock-on effect to other Chinese ports, as exporters look to switch bookings to alternative ports to avoid delays, in particular, NINGBO and QINGDAO. All of these ports are ranked in the World’s top 10 and have seen the highest volume gains year on year. Further afield, ports in South East Asia and the Indian Sub-Continent are now suffering similar problems as a direct result of being on co-operating schedules.
A combination of issues listed below, rather than one single problem, has led to this situation which is expected to continue throughout MAY and with a real possibility that things will deteriorate before they get better.
• Unpredictable weather conditions, (dense fog).
• Transition to the restructured alliances.
• Implementation of larger vessels.
• Volumes being stronger than expected.
• Ningbo port omission by certain carriers
• Container equipment shortages
• Empty Hanjin containers taking up vital port space.
Carriers have taken steps by reducing agreed customer space allocations in an attempt to handle a lesser number of bookings effectively. No doubt that while this period of uncertainty exists it will give strength for market pricing to remain high as subsequent roll pools are created with the backlog of containers awaiting export. From their side, Shanghai International Port Group has announced that they are already taking necessary actions to enable normal port operations as soon as possible.
Sandford will monitor the overall situation and issue a further communication update at the earliest opportunity, however delays should be expected and planned for in the interim.
