DHL seeks space after high Xmas demand, and Lunar New Year coming

GERMANY's DHL Global Forwarding plans to secure more cargo capacity from airlines to avoid expected shortages between North Asia and Europe in the first two months of the year, reports the UK's Transport Intelligence.

Backlogs of express freight built up on China-Europe, which resulted in steep freight rate increases in November and December and the company forsees this demand continuing into next year.

"We will be securing extra capacity from commercial carriers on our trade lanes between North Asia and Europe throughout the first quarter of 2010," said DHL regional fowarding chief Thomas Nieszner. "We are working very closely with our customers on capacity planning to ensure their supply chains are stable and delivery times are fast."

The reason for such a counter-intuitive development in a global downturn is most frequently given as the high cost of reactivating the laid-up aircraft place parked in the desert more than a year ago to reduce capacity as demand fell.

Air freight demand usually falls after Christmas, causing freight rates to drop, but the latest customer forecasts indicate a continuation of airfreight capacity shortages on north Asia-Europe routes.

With the next peak expected before the February lunar new year, with its holiday factory shutdowns, airfreight out of China, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan is expected to rise dramatically.

Source: www.schednet.com