Category: Supply Chain

With sea freight rates reaching some of the highest levels ever seen, along with equipment shortages, late vessels and still no guarantee of uplift, some shippers are starting to switch to air, driving up rates on a mode that had been enjoying some stability. The current lack of container line... Read more

With disruption at the Port of Felixstowe branded “a mess”, the national press is now also reporting on global port disruption, as retailers express concerns about product shortages in the run-up to Christmas.  As Metro has been reporting regularly in recent weeks, the impact at Felix... Read more

Container ships, including the world’s largest, are skipping UK ports entirely, or leaving only partially discharged and without collecting export containers, in what is fast becoming a daily occurrence. COVID-safe working practices and extensive deep-cleaning at shift handovers, continues t... Read more

Singles' Day is an unofficial Chinese holiday celebrating people who are not in relationships, with the unmarried commemorating the occasion by treating themselves to gifts, making Singles' Day the largest online shopping day in the world, by quite some margin. With 1.9bn products ordered in 2... Read more

Sea freight rates and surcharges continue to rise on all the primary trade-lanes, up 10% from Asia in the last week, with no signs of softening in the coming weeks, or months. Even with some blanked capacity over Golden Week, capacity on the Asia-Europe trade  increased 14% year over year... Read more

We reported last week how shipping lines were diverting empty containers away from the Asia-Europe trade-lane, to ply the more lucrative trans-Pacific services, with all the signs that demand could continue well into 2021. With massive and unanticipated demand, the capacity crunch from China t... Read more

Even as England enters a four-week lockdown and the rest of the UK operate under strict restrictions, consumer activity will continue to be strong, driving further air freight demand. Air freight rates from China continue to rise, as the peak season continues and distressed sea freight is incr... Read more

The start of the working week and the Port of Felixstowe is back in the news, for cancelling empty container restitutions (again), but the challenges facing shippers run much farther afield than Suffolk. The Taiwanese container shipping line Evergreen has issued a customer notice stating that ... Read more

The UK’s supply chains are facing unparalleled challenges and some links are buckling under the strain. The following is a transcript of a customer advisory issued by Metro Shipping on Tuesday…….. The COVID pandemic continues to impact global and domestic freight in the most profound way... Read more

Last week the Metro training team ran in-house sessions on the threats posed by cyber-crime and business fraud….how prescient they were. The air freight sector has never faced so many challenges, with global demand rising - spiking from some origins - and likely to spike further in the comin... Read more

The large numbers of empty containers stranded in Europe, due to blanked sailings, has led to equipment shortages in Asia, which is being exacerbated by shipping lines diverting empties to more profitable trans-pacific services. On the 10th September we reported how UK port operations had been... Read more

Shippers through Sydney have faced significant disruption for several months, due to bad weather, congestion and continuing industrial action by longshore workers, which has caused extensive delays to other ports in Australia and further afield in New Zealand.  The ongoing congestion has ... Read more