ANALYSIS
WORLD
It would be tempting to run
away with the idea that
globally, 2019 was a dire year
for air cargo – full stop.
Certainly, there was a sense of
unleavened gloom and doom,
month after month, as
freighters struggled to make
sense of a marketplace that
seemed out of sync with their
particular branch of expertise.
But to make the regional
market global is to commit a
mistake, for not every region
suffered from diminished
capacity or volumes.
That said, some facts have
to be recorded about the early
months of 2020, which present
a useful gauge for comparison
with 2019.
IATA reckoned that
airfreight volumes had fallen
by 1.9% year-over-year this
HIGHS
February, which it named as
the fifteenth straight month of
declining volumes.
In seasonally adjusted
terms, demand fell by 9.1%
month-over-month, which
AND
IATA termed “the largest ever
monthly decline for that
series.” Looking back, February
2019 cargo volumes were also
relatively weak, which goes
HIGHS
some way towards explaining
the somewhat small year-overyear
decrease.
In terms of freight capacity,
that dipped by 4.4% year-onyear
Did the US and Canadian freight sector
in February, marking the
really suffer in 2019? The Editor looks
first time that capacity had
actually contracted since
back over the last 12 months.
February 2017. Flight
cancellations from airlines in
2020 was a lot worse. Its statistics revealed that air cargo capacity
the Asia-Pacific region drove
was some 35% lower than it had been at that time a year ago.
the capacity reduction, IATA
Figures published by the company also pointed to the fact that
said. Needless to say, the
most trade lanes were seeing capacity reductions (compared with a
February decreases in demand
year ago) of between 30-60%. Interestingly, North America to Asia
were largely the result of the
Pacific trade had witnessed a 17% reduction in capacity while in
coronavirus’ impact on the
the reverse direction a 19% drop was recorded. But 2020 has been,
manufacturing sector in China.
and will be, a different scenario.
Moving on, data released by
And so back to 2019: was it as bad an operating environment as
range of transport solutions,
consultant Seabury in April
people make out?
not uniquely that of airfreight
revealed that if 2019 was bad,
Bob Imbriani, as Vice President, Corporate Development at
– so had Imbriani seen any Team Worldwide, is well placed
to comment on the recent 12
month period.
A positive year
“Actually, for us, 2019 was a
very positive year in terms of
US logistics,” he begins. “We
saw a growth in volumes of
trade, both domestically and at
the international level. There
were challenges along the way,
it must be said, but we were
able to overcome them.
“Much has been said about
the US/China trade war but to
my mind, this was not a major
negative factor. The reasoning
behind the tariffs, that of
bringing manufacturing
processes back into the US,
might have been a sound
enough policy but its success
was patchy – it certainly didn’t
happen everywhere. It was
limited in terms of success: you
needed companies to retool
and invest to make it work, so
it certainly wasn’t for everyone.
In the end we still had to
import materials and goods
and then there were
government exempted
industries, which helped.
Actually, before the trade war
escalated, China had been
outsourcing some of its
manufacturing anyhow – and
those countries were not
affected by any US embargoes.
“Other challenges that we
encountered were in the area of
security programmes: more and
more countries have been
introducing security measures
in terms of freight processing
so there was more work
involved in that area. Carrier
capacity and changes in
networked routes were other
factors that we encountered.”
Team Worldwide offers a
14 June 2020 www.airlogisticsinternational.com
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