Coronavirus Logistics Update 10 (COVID-19)

Welcome to the 10th summary article on the effects the Coronavirus is having on the logistics and supply chain sector. In general news the Boris Johnson is now out of hospital and recovering at home.  The UK on Thursday has decided to extended its lock down for another 3 weeks. There is still large concern that if the lock down is lifted there would be an immediate spike in cases which would leave the NHS struggling to manage. The government has set out at least five areas which must be met before any lock down could be consider to be lifted.

1. Ensure the daily death rate shows a constant decrease
2. Ensure that the infection rate was slowing to a manageable level
3. Personal Protective Equipment and testing would be available to meet any sudden increase in infections
4. As mention above, ensure the NHS would cope with the lock down being reduced
5. Information proving removing the lock down would guarantee a sudden bigger second peak of infections

When these points will be met it is unknown.  The worse case is it may be not fully removed until a vaccine is available which would be October at the earliest. Across Europe, Spain and Austria have begun to allowing the country to reopen. However France has decided to continue its lock down for another 4 weeks. Sweden the only country without any significant restrictions is showing an increase of cases but not at a catastrophic level that was predicted. This country is being closely watched.

Airfreight is still seeing very high import level not just from China but other regions. This is mainly due to the movement of urgent medical goods for the dealing with coronavirus. However not all forwarders are happy with their booking agents as some are getting charged additionally covid-19 handling surcharges. This is due to airlines using passenger planes to carry cargo in the main cabin as well as the main hold. Any cargo in the main cabin has to be secured to the seats. Handling agents are reporting that this is taking considerable time to achieve. Insiders in the industry are saying that the time delay incurred in using the main passenger cabin is offsetting any benefit in using it. Hopefully as handling agents and their workers become more familiar with these process then the situation will improve and it will be a benefit.

The demand for rail freight to Europe is continuing. China Post has now run the first of what it plans to be several mail only services to Poland and Latvia to help clear the huge backlog of items for Europe. The currently plan is to send the mail to central distribution points and then use trucks to deliver the mail across Europe to the relevant national post distribution point for final delivery.

Seafreight is continuing to have shipping lines introduce blank sailings to reduce  and redistribute capacity across many shipping routes.  Container booking cancellations are been reported by many freight forwarders. Goods are being cancelled as buyers do not want to be sitting on large amounts of stock which consumers either do not want, or with the continued lock down cannot be delivered. This is especially where two man deliveries are used.  Furniture is one commodity which has been singled out as having large amount of cancellations, this observation can be confirmed by AJF. As consumer confidence falls and people spend less, buyers are going to be increasing these cancellations over the next few months.