Forwarding

Meeting the EU road emissions targets will not be achieved by focusing exclusively on electric vehicles, with the combustion engine likely to play a significant role over the next two decades.

A new Flexport app on Shopify’s partner marketplace is likely to be the first of many initiatives between the forwarder and e-commerce storefront provider.

Denmark’s DSV collected record profits for 2022, but the forwarder says a return to a more “normal” market has begun.

Technology provider Freightify is aiming to empower forwarders to build an online quoting presence that would lessen their reliance on rate marketplaces.

The software arms race taking place in the global forwarding space shows no signs of relenting, with Miami-based Magaya getting growth capital to fuel its international ambitions.

Freightos’ public listing on the NASDAQ will be the first test of how public investors value one of the more prominent logistics technology companies to emerge over the past decade.

WiseTech Global, owner of the most widely used forwarding software product, has acquired a prominent vendor of drayage management software, capping a year of takeovers for the company.

Scrutiny over Flexport’s job cuts earlier this month points to a long-term issue for the venture-backed logistics company: a perceived lack of identity in a market that has long been skeptical of its differentiation.

Pressure on shippers to take a more active role in bringing down so-called Scope 3 emissions covering the activities of a company’s third-party vendors — including transportation — has increased in recent years.

A partnership between venture firm Northstar and India’s Allcargo Group is meant to formalize their joint investment plans into logistics-focused startups over the next year.

Falling demand for ocean and air freight services is driving headcount cuts across the logistics sector, with forwarder Flexport the latest to announce layoffs.

The change in leadership is likely to accelerate strategic changes in planning and capital spending at C.H. Robinson that have been under way since last March at the urging of investors.

Partnerships between small forwarders and early-stage software vendors offer a symbiotic opportunity to shape product direction that is not possible with more established technology providers.

After two years of record profits, a continued softening of demand and increased competition will put forwarding margins under pressure in the first half of 2023.

Long-term rates on major trade lanes out of Asia have fallen steadily through Q4 as shippers sign fewer contracts and instead ride the collapsing spot markets.

The need for forwarders to tether quoting and tracking in international freight modes to US surface modes has been highlighted by new offerings from ECU Worldwide and Freightos.

As the US economy slows, logistics managers are searching not just for lower supply chain costs but a normalization of freight flows and networks, a level of stability and predictability that remains elusive.

Carriers, forwarders, and shippers say there will be no pre-Lunar Year bump in rates because they expect US demand to remain weak while exports from China decline further.

China’s exports fell almost 9 percent in November, while carriers continue to pull significant levels of capacity on trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe services.

Peak supply chain congestion prompted major US retailers to charter their own ships, but Costco is now unwinding that bet.

Singapore-based carrier ONE expects to end its fiscal year with profits below the record earnings generated in FY2021 with no short-term improvement likely in container shipping markets.

Tumbling rates and an injection of capacity as congestion clears has become a price-destroying tool on the major export trades out of Asia.

The legacy of the pandemic’s effect on supply chains will be less about permanent cost increases and more about permanently altered attitudes towards risk, writes JOC’s Peter Tirschwell.

US agriculture shippers still face challenges and elevated costs in reaching overseas markets due to unexpected billing from ocean carriers and uncertain vessel schedules.

Carrier53, a joint venture of a breakbulk vessel operator and container manufacturer, said it will offer trans-Pacific sailings from China to the US West Coast with a special emphasis on domestic intermodal containers.

Container shipping trades out of Asia will continue to slow through the second half of the year as the global economy contracts, but carriers and analysts say it will be a gradual weakening of demand and rates rather than a sharp drop.

A new report is putting hard figures to the costs of high demand, port congestion, and the resulting increase in inventories.

The container ship orderbook currently stands at 26.7 percent of the global fleet, with much of the new capacity to be delivered in 2023 and 2024, but carriers have no intention of allowing the additional supply to undermine rates and profitability.

Reefer equipment for European exporters is in short supply as the refrigerated shipments compete for carrier attention with less complex and higher-priced dry containers.

There is ample evidence that shippers during the COVID-19 pandemic have torn up the supply chain playbook that served them effectively for years, but questions remain over whether those changes will be permanent.

The number of LNG-powered dual-fuel vessels ordered by major carriers has risen sharply in the past year, but so has opposition from environmental groups that say the newbuilds will lock in fossil fuel production for decades.

The Panama Canal Authority is proposing a new tolling plan that would assess the first fees on empty containers returning from North America to Asia.

A report from McKinsey & Co. says that ocean freight rates will only return to pre-COVID-19 levels if US demand for consumer goods slows and port congestion clears.

US East Coast ports will see an uptick in deployed vessel capacity to start 2022 thanks to additional all-water Asia services being added by ocean carriers.

A sea change in ocean freight rate volatility has precipitated new efforts to drive usage of derivatives, with index providers suggesting there is previously unseen appetite from shippers and forwarders for hedging tools.

End-to-end recovery in the global supply chain will only come through slower demand growth and a period of calm that is far from guaranteed as long as COVID-19 continues to affect manufacturing and consumption.

Liner carriers find themselves in the unusual position of having cash to both repay debt and invest in a range of ways, from new ships to technology to strategic acquisitions.

Detention and demurrage costs have soared in 2021, and shippers complain that many of these storage fees are mistaken and difficult to correct.

International air freight and last-mile delivery saw the fastest revenue growth in the transportation sector last year, while industrial transportation suffered.

Anyone trying to read into recent activity in freight rate indices should be careful to distinguish between what they would like to see and what they might actually be seeing, JOC analyst Lars Jensen says.