E-COMMERCE
Online redesign
Express integrators like DHL concentrate on online retail delivery
to the consumer but what of the effects further back up the
supply chain? How much has e-commerce changed the airfreight
landscape? Chris Lewis investigates.
According to DHL’s
latest report on the
subject, Shortening the
Last Mile: Winning Logistics
Strategies in the Race to the
Urban Consumer, Internet
retail sales quintupled between
2008, from US$290bn to
US$1.6trn - and show no
sign of letting up for the
foreseeable future.
Vivien Lau, Managing
Director of Hacis, a whollyowned
logistics support
subsidiary of Hong Kong Air
Cargo Terminals, of which
she is also Executive Director,
believes that e-commerce is
indeed creating a number of
different traffic formats.
She explains: “The
continuing rapid growth of
this sector, as it replaces the
traditional retail model, is
creating huge volumes of
traffic. Some of this is not
new, but is just presented
by different parties, and in
different formats. But some
of it is certainly new business
– for example, exciting
new start-ups breaking into
international markets in a way
they never could have done
through traditional retail.”
Lau says that the typical
ways in which e-commerce
manifests itself in the air
cargo industry are either
one-off small orders, direct
from e-tailer/manufacturer to
retail customer (such items
travelling by integrator, or by
international mail); or bulk
shipments of products from
manufacturer or merchant
to e-tailer (maybe from a
specialist, or a platform such
as Amazon). These latter will
generally travel by traditional
airfreight on the first sector,
but by one-off small parcel on
their second sector to the end
customer.
She adds: “Hacis is directly
involved in both scenarios. In
the first, we work with postal
authorities to handle and
As e-commerce continues its inexorable
rise, so all parties in the supply chain have
had to adapt to the phenomenon
ship large volumes of mail
containing e-commerce items
that require security scanning
and containerising before
international shipment by
airfreight.
“In the second scenario, we
form part of the supply chain
moving bulk exports from
manufacturer and his freight
agent by road from mainland
China, then containerising
and delivering to Hactl for
carriage on any of its over 100
airline customers.
“Inbound, we collect
import bulk shipments, and
deliver into our mainland
China depots from where
forwarders and e-tailers collect
the bulk product for transfer
to their fulfilment centres.”
She adds that while
express operators were the
early beneficiaries of the
e-commerce revolution,
with growing volumes
and increasingly varied
requirements (including
the need to reduce shipping
costs), postal services and
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