Regional winners of the YIFFYA revealed
FIATA and TT Club reveal this year’s regional winners of the Young International Freight Forwarder of the Year Award (YIFFYA). For over 20 years, the YIFFYA has been providing valuable training and networking opportunities for young talent in the freight forwarding industry. Both FIATA and TT Club are thrilled to continually recognize the inspirational and dynamic minds of the young freight forwarding community.
Traditionally, the four regional winners would present their dissertations at the FIATA World Congress, with final judging and the announcement of the global winner taking place during the event. This year, with the postponement of the congress, the YIFFYA event will go online and will be organized in November in line with the period for the FIATA General Meeting. More information will be published in the coming months.
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Private Multimodal Operators to Secure License
The Ethiopian Maritime Affairs Authority (EMAA) is finalizing a new directive specifying requirements to govern the licensing of private multimodal transport operators.
Private multimodal operators will also need their own dry port, which could be hundreds of hectares large. A number of private Logistics companies who requested to engage in multimodal services before were hindered because government failed to provide such land.
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Ethio-Djibouti Railway Generates Over 1.2 million USD in Seven Months
Ethio-Djibouti Railway announced that it has generated 1.264 million US Dollars in transport revenue during the first seven months of 2021. It witnessed 722 freight trains running on the railway, recording approximately 989,000 tonnes in freight volume and 770 million tonne-kilometre in fright turnover.
Meanwhile, the cargo service contributed over 45 million US Dollars, pumping up the aggregate transport revenue in the seven-month period to 46.903 million US Dollars.
On the other hand, as a testimony to its role of “a livelihood protector”, Ethio-Djibouti Railway transported 225,000 tonnes of imported fertilizers, up 191 percent year on year.
As the first of its kind “Eastern Industrial Park Trackless Station”, the railway is interconnected with industrial parks.
Higher efficiency and better services will give a boost to the economy and usher in a fresh development stage featuring a deep integration between the railway and the parks.
Ethio-Djibouti Railway will soon provide small-and medium-sized businesses with uni-modal container transport services of high quality.
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Enterprise to Buy 3,000 Additional Containers
A global logistics crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the state shipping service provider to acquire 3,000 shipping containers less than a month after conducting a similar procurement.
The Ethiopian Shipping & Logistics Services Enterprise (ESLSE), which has increased tariffs by over four-fold due to the shortage of containers almost two months ago, is expected to spend an estimated 765 million Br to buy these containers. It is among a series of actions implemented by the Enterprise to collect shipments docking at various ports worldwide, largely in China, where 13,000 containers were stranded last month.
The latest procurement marks the second attempt by the Enterprise to acquire additional shipping containers in recent months. It bought 3,000 units earlier this year through the CXIC Group Container Co. Ltd, which is bidding in the latest round, at the cost of 17 million dollars.
Senior executives of the Enterprise blamed the shortage of shipping containers for their drastic markups on cargo tariffs, which comprised quadruple the prices charged a year ago. Importers now have to pay as high as 4,838 dollars for 20ft and 9,223 dollars for 40ft containers. Despite the high cost, goods have been stranded at ports for months now, with no solution in sight. Some have been subjected to fines from banks for missing deadlines on letters of credit (LCs) issued.
The Enterprise has begun issuing waivers to importers, allowing them to use other shipping companies to transport goods from China.
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Africa-China trade slowed by container shortage as Covid-19 hits shipping
China is Africa’s largest trading partner, exporting products such as garments, electronics and construction equipment to many countries on the continent, but traders are facing cargo delays and steep import costs during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Observers blame this on an acute shortage of shipping containers, with more vessels prioritising China-Europe and trans-Pacific trade routes before serving other markets including Africa. Importers from East Africa say their orders are subject to delays of weeks or months.
Gilbert Langat, chief executive officer of the Shippers Council of Eastern Africa, which advocates for cargo owners, said countries in Sub-Saharan Africa had been the most affected. According to Langat, cargo to Africa was left short of containers by the disruption of the pandemic, then exploding demand from Asia-Europe and trans-Pacific trade routes as economies reopened, and the backlog caused by this year’s Suez Canal blockage.
The border restrictions China imposed to curb the spread of Covid-19 prompted Evergreen and Cosco, the major shipping lines taking cargo to East Africa, to stop sailing there, and businesses to look to alternative markets, Langat said. China-Africa trade has yet to fully recover.
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Maersk Cancels Six Ningbo Calls as World Watches for China’s Next Move
With no indication from the Chinese authorities as to the timeline or plan for the resumption of operations at the closed container terminal in the Ningbo-Zhoushan port complex, the shipping lines have been left scrambling to come up with strategies to minimize the disruptions. At the same time, shippers who have already been struggling with bottlenecks, rising fees, and delays are waiting and watching and even the international financial markets are getting nervous about the potential impact.
UK-based (re)insurance risk management consultant the Russell Group analyzed the port operations reporting that it believes “China’s partial closure of the port of Ningbo threatens $172 billion’s worth of global trade.” Among the biggest potential impacts, Russell points to $39.2 billion work of integrated circuit board exports. Many global companies had already reported shortages and increased wait times for electronic components which according to this data could be further exasperated by the closure of the Meishan terminal.
Maersk is also now advising customers that, six vessels on the route between Asia and South America were scheduled to call at the closed Meishan terminal. In August all six of those vessels will omit Ningbo and Maersk is advising customers to try to re-arrange for shipment via CMA CGM.
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