Air & Sea News March 2021

sea freight
It is clear that the precarious situation (lack of equipment, overbooked ships) continues; there is no foreseeable significant relief after Chinese New Year.
There are several reasons for this:

• A large number of container ships are on hold off the USA due to congested ports (congestion).
• There is still a lack of empty containers for loading.
• The utilization of existing equipment is high.
• Many customers have moved their shipments to CNY in the hope of better rates.
• China is producing at a very high capacity and the shipping companies' order books are full for weeks and months.
• In January, only a third of the container ships were on time, and we still have to reckon with huge delays.
• The ships are so overloaded that there is now a worldwide loss rate of around 3,000 containers that have gone overboard within just under 3 months.

In addition, shipowners, even for booked containers, are charged retrospectively, which could not be taken into account in your and our calculation. Shipment delivery to German seaports and western ports is often only permitted a short time (a few days or hours) before the ship arrives, which also leads to additional costs that cannot be planned.

airfreight
Air freight volumes are still booming, particularly when imported from China. In return, the backbone of air freight — passenger flight — is still reduced by around 90%. Air freight rates around the world are constantly changing and remain at a high level. In particular, the legal requirements for COVID 19 control in Hong Kong (quarantine of flight crews) are leading to the extremely tense situation with imports in Germany, even after Chinese New Year.

In general
The ability to plan international shipments by sea, rail and air is still subject to many uncertainties. The rate level remains very high, unstable and barely predictable. Due to a lack of space and lack of equipment for all modes of transport, deadlines can only be implemented with an extended time window. We therefore ask for your continued understanding of the current situation, which we cannot influence. Experience shows that we can often find a satisfactory solution for your transport task by talking to you. Therefore, the following still applies: Please talk to us.

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