Janet Napolitano, Us secretary of homeland security, whilst attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, unveiled the “National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security”. The objective of this global strategy is to prevent terrorists from exploiting global supply chains. Napolitano said that “We must continue to strengthen global supply chains to ensure that they operate effectively in time of crisis, recover quickly from disruptions and facilitate international trade,” and that ““We look forward to working closely with our international partners…

It is just 13 days to the Chinese New Year 2012, the year of the Dragon. Factories in China will shut-down over this period to mark the occasion and as a result importers are scurrying to book freight space prior to this shutdown. Consequently spot prices have surged by 30.3% for the first week of January 2012.

The WCI (World Container Index) illustrated this fact in that the price of shipping a 40-foot equivilant unit from Shanghai to Singapore jumped from $944 to $1,230 last week.

In addition to this increased demand, supply has decreased on the East-West trade lands in response to rapidly decreasing volumes in 2011.

To…

Frankfurt airport has introduced a night flight ban which has had an adverse effect on Lufthansa Cargo. In fact for the month of November air cargo fell 9.4% compared to November 2010.The night time flight ban was introduced in November.

On a more positive note the overall Lufthansa Group reported a 5.1% increase in air freight for the first 11 months of the year.

Lufthansa is dismayed by the night-time ban and Karl Ulrich Garnadt, Lufthansa Cargo Chairman, commented “We’ve managed at great expense to keep our customer services comparatively intact”.

He also expresses his disappointment that some…

IATA has reported that Air freight cargo volumes have fallen 4.7% when compared to October 2010.

IATA believes that shippers are currently more inclined to use sea freight in an effort to reduce costs. When combined with the low confidence in the manufacturing sector combined with weak demand from Europe and North America, seafreight has rapidly become a very attractive option for global shippers.

However the Asian-Pacific market is bucking the trend with an October freight load factor which is 12.3% above the global average