Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Air cargo rates dip as transatlantic freight volume cools off

Market adjusts to less volume and more capacity, but rates are still double their pre-pandemic levels, Clive says.

clive Screen Shot 2022-07-06 at 1.18.30 PM.png

Global air cargo volumes fell again in June as additional summer airline capacity applied downward pressure to freight rates, according to a report from air cargo industry analysts Clive Data Services.

Specifically, global air cargo volumes were down 8% compared to last June, the Dutch firm said. That movement has been developing steadily, with volumes in the general airfreight market dropping 7% in June compared to 2019, after they had dropped 8% in May.


Combined with added capacity, that trend has also forced a drop in freight rates, highlighted by a 30% decline over the past three months for the North Atlantic route. While air cargo rates from Europe to North America are still more than double their pre-pandemic levels, they have now dropped below their mark for June 2021 and have nearly sunk to where they were in June 2020, Clive data shows. Put another way, general airfreight rates in June were 129% higher than in 2019 and 13% higher than in 2021.

“In our analysis of air cargo market performance in May, we said the North Atlantic market could provide ‘a test case for the direction of other markets once they also return to their pre-Covid levels.’ This is still true, and we may see the consequences sooner than we anticipated a month ago,” Niall van de Wouw, founder of Clive and now Chief Airfreight Officer at Xeneta, said in a release. Clive was acquired in January by Xeneta, the Norwegian provider of ocean and air freight rate benchmarking services.

“General North Atlantic airfreight rates dropped by around 30% between the first week of April to the last week of June. This brings these rates very close to the 2020 levels. If we just look at the Spot market, the rates are already lower in the last two weeks of June 2022 compared to 2020 by around 5% and the market has yet to bottom out. This will be causing some interesting soul-searching for airlines and forwarders,” van de Wouw said.

The knock-on effects of a softening air cargo market could see carriers redeploying their freighters to other markets in Asia Pacific, Africa, or South America in search of better revenues, he said. The shift comes as air freight carriers face continuing labor shortages with a “people drain” in the aviation and logistics industries, spanning both airports and road transport. And some forecasts now see a worsening situation in 2022, due to relatively low wages and poor working conditions for some workers on the frontline of supply chains, van de Wouw said.


The Latest

More Stories

David Scheffrahn of Ocado Intelligent Automation

InPerson interview: David Scheffrahn of Ocado Intelligent Automation

David Scheffrahn is the North American vice president of sales at Ocado Intelligent Automation, a part of the technology specialist Ocado Group. Although he began his career focusing on robotic solutions for semiconductor, electronics, and automotive manufacturers, Scheffrahn eventually moved on to the logistics sector, where he worked at Rethink Robotics, Seegrid, Plus One Robotics, and Dexterity before joining Ocado in 2023. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas.

Q: How would you describe the current state of the automation industry?

Keep ReadingShow less

Featured

Trucking industry experiences record-high congestion costs

Trucking industry experiences record-high congestion costs

Congestion on U.S. highways is costing the trucking industry big, according to research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), released today.

The group found that traffic congestion on U.S. highways added $108.8 billion in costs to the trucking industry in 2022, a record high. The information comes from ATRI’s Cost of Congestion study, which is part of the organization’s ongoing highway performance measurement research.

Keep ReadingShow less

From pingpong diplomacy to supply chain diplomacy?

There’s a photo from 1971 that John Kent, professor of supply chain management at the University of Arkansas, likes to show. It’s of a shaggy-haired 18-year-old named Glenn Cowan grinning at three-time world table tennis champion Zhuang Zedong, while holding a silk tapestry Zhuang had just given him. Cowan was a member of the U.S. table tennis team who participated in the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan. Story has it that one morning, he overslept and missed his bus to the tournament and had to hitch a ride with the Chinese national team and met and connected with Zhuang.

Cowan and Zhuang’s interaction led to an invitation for the U.S. team to visit China. At the time, the two countries were just beginning to emerge from a 20-year period of decidedly frosty relations, strict travel bans, and trade restrictions. The highly publicized trip signaled a willingness on both sides to renew relations and launched the term “pingpong diplomacy.”

Keep ReadingShow less
forklift driving through warehouse

Hyster-Yale to expand domestic manufacturing

Hyster-Yale Materials Handling today announced its plans to fulfill the domestic manufacturing requirements of the Build America, Buy America (BABA) Act for certain portions of its lineup of forklift trucks and container handling equipment.

That means the Greenville, North Carolina-based company now plans to expand its existing American manufacturing with a targeted set of high-capacity models, including electric options, that align with the needs of infrastructure projects subject to BABA requirements. The company’s plans include determining the optimal production location in the United States, strategically expanding sourcing agreements to meet local material requirements, and further developing electric power options for high-capacity equipment.

Keep ReadingShow less
map of truck routes in US

California moves a step closer to requiring EV sales only by 2035

Federal regulators today gave California a green light to tackle the remaining steps to finalize its plan to gradually shift new car sales in the state by 2035 to only zero-emissions models — meaning battery-electric, hydrogen fuel cell, and plug-in hybrid cars — known as the Advanced Clean Cars II Rule.

In a separate move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also gave its approval for the state to advance its Heavy-Duty Omnibus Rule, which is crafted to significantly reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from new heavy-duty, diesel-powered trucks.

Keep ReadingShow less