Air-to-sea switch slow to take off in SA

Although international press reports are consistently talking about an accelerating swing from airfreight to seafreight, there is no strong indication that this has yet reached significant proportions in SA. There is certainly talk about it in the forwarding industry, according to Dave Logan, CE of the SA Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff). “The ‘green’ situation is making this a hot topic at the moment,” he told FTW, “with a growing groundswell against airfreight. “You’ll still have airfreight for urgent shipments, but a lot will definitely move to seafreight because of the green factor.” Sue Wood, operations director of CargoCare, also noted quite a lot of swing on her records. “I don’t know whether it’s seasonal or not, but we’re very much seeing that airfreight-seafreight swing,” she added. “It’s a drop, but definitely not tragic.” Calvin Reddy, director of JAS Forwarding, similarly agreed that air to sea was the trend. “We’ve been experiencing that for a while,” he said. “Some of our big airfreight clients have made a major switch to sea. “Only the very urgent is still travelling by air, and our airfreight volumes are definitely showing this.” However, Gerald Rowe, MD of a hartrodt, was less convinced about a major swing. “I can’t deny that we’ve had increased seafreight volumes,” he told FTW. “But our airfreight volumes are holding up extremely well. “There seems to be just a general trend that more people are choosing to put things on the boat – not necessarily switching from airfreight.” Meantime, the airline industry seems to be a bit more confident that cargo volumes are going to increase again. The latest survey for the first quarter of the year by the International Air Transport Association (Iata) found that some 43% of airline chief financial officers and heads of cargo who responded were expecting improvement over the year when it came to the movement of cargo. According to Iata’s reckoning, compared to the fourth quarter of 2011, the proportion of respondents reporting an increase in traffic over the first three months of 2012 has more than doubled, and the share of optimistic views for the coming 12 months has also increased significantly. Improved indicators of business confidence and trade, the report added, had made respondents more confident about the year ahead.