Ocean Shippers Looking to Offer Air-Freight Options

Companies that ship cargo on the seas are looking for ways to offer customers shipping in the skies, too, CNBC reported Thursday (Sept. 15).

“We are finding out more and more that our customers really need an end-to-end logistics solution,” CNBC quoted Michel Pozas Lucic, head of air freight at Moller Maersk, as having said. “They’re looking for this one-stop-shop that takes away not only the complexity of the logistics, but also makes it an optimized, efficient and effective solution,” he added.

CNBC reported that Maersk, which is the world’s largest shipper of containers, began to offer air cargo in April and has 15 planes in service.

International Air Transport Association cargo data for July, released in September, showed that air freight levels are settling in around pre-pandemic levels. Air cargo levels had soared as the world emerged form the COVID-19 pandemic, but have essentially stabilized since April, the group’s director general said in a prepared statement.

Instability in supply chains complicates matters for air shippers trying to maintain schedules, Willie Walsh, IATA’s director general, said in a prepared statement. “As is the case for almost all industries, we’ll need to carefully watch both economic and political developments over the coming months.”

One lesson many executives have learned coming out of the pandemic is that their logistics operations are inadequate, analyst Marc Zeck of the firm Stifel reportedly told CNBC. “The last three years have shown quite a lot of companies that their logistics divisions are not up to the task.”

“Nobody cared really about supply chains … before the pandemic started. Now, it’s an issue or a topic for executive boards,” he added.

Read more: FedEx Closes Stores and Grounds Planes as eCommerce Volume Falls

PYMNTS reported last week that FedEx was closing retail locations and grounding aircraft to cut costs amid a slump in air cargo shipments resulting from falling e-commerce activity. The shipper also was suffering from softening Asian economies, Raj Subramaniam stated in a news release.