Airfreight rates are starting to stabilise, albeit with several fuel increases of late. This is good news for the sector, which has been plagued by exceptionally high rates and serious capacity constraints in recent months.According to Stephen Bishop, airfreight director at SACO CFR, new capacity is also entering the market regularly. “It seems we will keep several f lights heading into our winter rotation, which is good levels too. We are, therefore, bullish about the performance of our import and export products in the months ahead,” he told Freight News.Megan Ekermans, who heads up route development, said that with the additional capacity and increase in global volumes, preferential pricing was coming back into the market. “We are very confident in the service we offer. By strengthening our buying power, it enables our clients to be more competitive in their market.”Bishop said the company’s Shanghai consolidation service was also operating again after the Chinese New Year. The service has a blocked space agreement (BSA) directly with Etihad.“We are looking to secure as much additional capacity heading into the new rotation as we can get our hands on. Getting more airline solutions out of the Far East is a top priority for us,” he added. “We have also reviewed our internal pricing processes and streamlined these to ensure that we are offering competitive pricing to our clients first. This, we believe, will be a strong differentiator to our clients in the service they are offering their own.”Ekermans said customers were still very price/rate-driven and shopping around for rates within the market remained a key trend at present.“Export rates seem to have stabilised again after the discovery of the Omicron variant of the Covid-19 coronavirus in South Africa last year.“This variant had caused backlogs in some areas, especially at Frankfurt Airport, but we have confirmed capacity for our consol offering,” she said.Bishop said they had seen a good start on exports this year, a development many were attributing to the challenges in the ocean freight sector. “We have seen imports start to slow down, but we are hopeful this will pick up now after the Chinese New Year.”
