SIMIC

KERRY Logistics' strategic sales director, Emma Rowlands says the company that has seen more airfreight and sea-air enquiries as ocean freight shipment delays take their toll due to the Red Sea crisis with ships rerouting from the Suez Canal in Egypt to the Cape of Good Hope in Africa.

"There has been more new enquiries and interest from customers as the issues have progressed," said Ms Rowland



"There are also issues with space availability and we have picked up new business from our competitors as we have been able to offer a solution for the cargo that's proved more competitive and flexible than their current providers."



She said the company is asking customers to build in around 10- 14 days extra on their transit time dependent on carrier and origin. Sailing around the Cape adds around 6,000 km to EU lane, which means over 10 days is added to the length of the trip, potentially running up to two weeks.



"All carriers claim to be at full capacity for bookings and there will be a roll pool by carriers. Carriers are controlling capacity with blank sailings: Ocean Alliance and 2M announced 15+ void plans for February, with more to be expected from THE Alliance soon.



"We are expecting potential equipment shortages in the next few weeks as a knock-on effect for longer transits," Ms Rowlands said.



Regarding the extra time to sail via the Cape of Good Hope, she said most customers are very concerned especially with the timing of the issues just before Chinese New Year and are not happy at all with longer transits.



"There are issues around reliability of schedules making it very difficult for planning intakes in their warehouses and in some instances, there are twice as many containers arriving all in one week, causing bottlenecks in their supply chain, extra costs, and delays to their customers," she added.



"We have seen an increase in airfreight enquiries and sea-air, as we offer full end-to-end solutions with air, sea-air, road-air and rail."