May Connected
29th May, 2024
To our wonderful customers, welcome to the May edition of Connected.
We would prefer to start with good news but with so much happening in sea freight we need to ensure you are well aware of the situations at play.
Global shipping issues are relentless and show no sign of abating, unfortunately planning for your important orders needs to be done with the intent of a longer transit time and increasing rates.
The issues are extensive, and we have detailed many of them here.
- Blank sailing ex China to Australia to continue in June and July, this removes capacity on our trade lane.
- Rate increases announced for June and indications are they will continue increasing in July.
- Ocean freight rates on EU, USA and South American trade lanes ex China are double the rate than the AU trade lane, some vessels have been moved to lanes that make more margins for the shipping lines.
- Sailings to and from Europe are not going via the Red Sea due to the attacks in these waters, this extends the lead time by two weeks as vessels need to sail around the Cape of Good Hope.
- Longer transit times are impacting the availability of empty containers, 40’s in particular ex China are a problem.
- Shipping lines will make empties more readily available to trade lanes with higher margins, this alone confirms above point that rates to AU will increase further.
- With rates increasing the gap between Name Account (NAC) rates and market rates is extensive, some shipping lines are already advising those on NAC’s that rates will need to increase from the agreed levels. The issue will be if not agreed, then market rate containers will take priority on the bookings, again the margin wins.
- Volumes globally are up on previous years for the same period, this could be due to many businesses running down stock from 2022 and now needing to catch up.
- The idle fleet is less than 1%, so no extra capacity to call up.
With these matters and others in play, we are starting to see port congestion again. As a result where possible, we always recommend direct sailings to Australia, transhipment ports such as Singapore and Port Klang will have delays.
Currently the Port of Singapore is experiencing a congestion time of 7 days, from experience this will lengthen.
The attacks in the Red Sea by the Houthis shows no sign of relenting. Just this week they claimed to have attacked 3 merchant vessels and 2 warships.
All of this essentially means plan on some extended lead times, and please ensure your purchase orders are shared with SCC at least two weeks prior to the order being ready.
As always, the SCC team is here to support you in anyway, please reach out to us if you would like further details or would like to arrange a call or meeting to discuss in greater details.
SCC eCommerce Warehouse
At SCC we are super proud of our purpose-built eCommerce facility, and particularly the SCC team that manage our customers orders.
The blue bins we have on site are not your ordinary blue bins, they hold the hard work, sweat and tears of our many online retail customers.
The fully barcoded bins allow our customers to work remotely anywhere in the world, and more importantly these bins provide the opportunity to give back valuable time to our customers so they can focus on their business.
We have each of our customers covered for fulfilment, national and global distribution, live visibility to SKU level and all related services.
Great news! Our warehouse team has freed up space in our purpose-built eCommerce facility, allowing you to manage your business from anywhere in the world while we handle all your 3PL needs.
Drop us a message for more details and find out how our services let you get on with your business.
A nod to SCC’s history
SCC was started in 2003 by Gino DeLuca, it has been 6 years since Gino decided to sell and work on his golf game.
It was wonderful for SCC Director’s Paul and Greg to catch up with Gino in Brisbane recently.
We are very proud to have maintained Gino’s connection to SCC with his son Aaron DeLuca, our QLD Branch Manager.
Global 3PL Network – members
We are very pleased to have recently signed up to the Global 3PL Network, currently this network offers warehousing solutions Australia wide. If you require warehouse/3PL services within any state of Australia we now have you covered.
We will share further details on this great network separately, in the meantime please reach out to us with AU wide warehousing enquiries, sales@sccargo.com.au
Off The Record
We are working on something very exciting in Adelaide, watch this space, all details will be available in our June edition.
As always the team at SCC are here to support you in anyway, please reach out to us if you would like further details, or if you would like to arrange a call or meeting to discuss in greater detail.
Please contact us on sales@sccargo.com.au
