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No rail freight from London Gateway and Tilbury after storms

Shippers are scrambling to make alternative arrangement for inland container movements in the UK after a train derailment forced the suspension of rail services to key terminals in the south-east, including DP World London Gateway. More than 1km of track was torn up by storms that battered the region on Friday, with Forth Ports notifying customers that no rail services would be servicing Tilbury or Tilbury 2 this week. A spokesperson for DP World told The Loadstar: "We are currently operating a reduced rail freight service from our London Gateway terminal. We are working closely with customers and with Network Rail to minimise disruption while repairs to the network are carried out." Hapag-Lloyd has warned customers that inland cargo movements were likely to be impacted, advising them to arrange road transport for any containers booked under merchant haulage arrangements. For customers using carrier haulage, the German liner noted that its inland team would discuss alternative transport arrangements, but warned it would be unable to accept additional haulage requests during the disruption. Whether there is sufficient trucking capacity to absorb the displaced rail volumes remains unclear, but as with much of the world, the UK's haulage industry has been contending with a decades-long crisis in attracting new talent. A spokesperson for the Road Haulage Association told The Loadstar it was "monitoring the situation and will support members however we can", but was unable to give any detail on the expected level of demand provoked by two key gateways out of service for at least a week. Hapag-Lloyd added it was monitoring the situation and would provide further updates as information became available, but the timetable for restoring normal rail freight operations, the number of containers affected, and the scale of any backlog all had yet to be established.

UPS: Data centre logistics market to be worth $15bn

UPS has seen its data centre volumes rapidly increase this year and is expecting the logistics market associated with the industry to be worth $15bn per year. Speaking shortly after announcing the company's third-quarter results, the express giant's chief executive Carol Tomé highlighted an "explosion of data centre growth" in the US and described the logistics opportunities associated with the industry as "enormous". "In fact, we estimate the logistics opportunities associated with data centres alone is $15bn," she said. She added that "the numbers are crazy" and could potentially even double. Tome said that in the third quarter of the year, UPS' high-tech small package business grew 30% year-on-year, although she added that this was from a small base. The growth in high-value shipments provided the company with a "really solid foundation to grow earnings". Meanwhile, UPS saw third-quarter revenues increase 6.7% year on year to $22.8bn, while operating profits were down 3.3% to $1.7bn and net income declined 11.3% to $1.2bn. However, the results included a charge of $279m comprised of transformation strategy costs of $130m as well as a $182m charge associated with a goodwill impairment in Supply Chain Solutions. This was partially offset by a gain on sale of MD-11 assets of $33m. Its supply chain division saw revenues rise 18.2% in the quarter on the back of higher rates in air and ocean freight, while logistics revenues improved based on healthcare demand.

Produce shippers need better visibility and metrics to ward off costly delays

Faced with existential cost challenges, perishables shippers have welcomed the initiative of the Global Coalition of Fresh Produce (GCFP) to improve logistics flows through a charter of best practices - but some industry executives want better metrics to track carrier performance in order to make significant headway. The GCFP's latest survey, published last week, shows an industry in distress; where many operators are struggling with rising costs - from fuel and shipping over fertiliser to plant protection products and packaging, with 85% reporting higher costs in each of these categories. Nearly two-thirds of respondents saw costs rise 10% or more, and one in seven reported increases in excess of 50%. Most struggle to pass the higher costs on to customers, and almost two-thirds consider their medium-term economic sustainability threatened. At the Fruit Attraction event in Madrid this month, the GCFP unveiled its charter of best practices, which aims for a collaborative approach by all participants in produce supply chains. ( See Produce shippers prepare best practice charter for transport - The Loadstar) It espouses collaboration and communication, fair and transparent business terms, competition and efficiency, cargo integrity and product quality, supported by optimal handling, resilience, and risk preparedness. The charter was well received at the event, but some found it did not go far enough to bring about a transformative change. Edouard Brière, founder of Trackberry, a container tracking and document automation platform for fresh produce importers, called it "a welcome step forward", but added that it needed importer-focused measurements to succeed. He highlighted ocean carrier schedule reliability, arguing that ETA at destination port was a metric that missed the impact of schedule changes on the importer. Whether or not a vessel arrived technically on time is irrelevant if the imported container is not ready to move at the time the importer planned - be it due to schedule updates during transit, late arrival of documentation, or other factors. To a large extent, the problem lies in communication, he believes. "The recurrent frustration [for importers] is not that a ship is late. It's that they find out too late to do anything about it," Mr Brière added. He pointed out that failure to have the container ready to go as planned rapidly piled up costs for importers - for storage at the port and electricity to power the reefer, for a wasted truck journey and warehouse costs. However, these pale in comparison to penalties for missing deadlines buyers set to sell the produce during a planned window, and lost business down the road. What matters to the importer is how close the arrival was to the arrival estimated a week ahead, how often that estimate changed, how late the importer was informed about this, and whether or not the documents required for clearing the shipment arrived ahead of the cargo, he argued. According to him, measuring carrier reliability should not be difficult for the GCFP. All that would be needed is a container number and its promised departure and arrival dates, he suggested, adding that importers could track shipments per lane and carrier to monitor how expected time of arrival strays from the schedule they had been given.