ZIM sailing into the black? 
The Haifa (Israel)-headquartered shipping company ZIM has reported its Q1/2020 results. All major indicators improved in comparison to the same period in 2019, yet a net loss of USD 11.9 million compared to USD 24.3 million in Q1/2019 resulted at the of the quarter. While... more
Container index takes a fall in April
The downturn had been expected. The container throughput of the RWI Leibniz Institute for Economic Research and the Institute for Shipping Economics (ISL) fell from 110.4 (corrected) to 108.9 in April, down 6.5% from the value of the same period last year. In the Chinese... more
No breakbulk fair, but nevertheless big event in Bremen
Some weeks ago, it was announced that Breakbulk Europe, the world's largest fair specialising in heavy cargo logistics, will not open today, 26 May 2020 but has been postponed to 29 September - 1 October. Nevertheless, the airport of Bremen, the city on the northern coast of... more
Fostering e-bills of lading globally
The Digital Container Shipping Association (Dcsa), in which most of the major carriers seek to standardise their digital activities, has put forward that the current pandemic forges the need to digitise the bill of lading (B/L) in shipping as well. André Simha, global chief... more
Impact of pandemic on already struggling airports
Significantly later than in 2019 and 2018, Airports Council International (ACI) published last year's traffic figures of its 1979 member airports in 176 countries only last week, including a comparison of Q1 figures of 2019 and 2020. As for cargo, against a global... more
Emirates expands scheduled and charter operations
Last Thursday, 21 May 2020, Emirates resumed scheduled service to nine passenger destinations, offering bellyhold cargo capacity to and from Chicago, Frankfurt, London Heathrow, Madrid, Melbourne, Milan, Paris CDG, Sydney and Toronto. Simultaneously, Emirates Skycargo... more
Flying vaccines from Brussels to Mumbai
Qatar Airways Cargo transported 56 Skycell containers with vaccines from Global Biopharma on its scheduled maindeck and bellyhold cargo flights for Ceva Logistics. The 54 t shipment consisting of pneumococcal and varicella vaccines were flown from Brussels to Mumbai via Doha... more
Hapag-Lloyd holds its course in 2020
Hapag-Lloyd's transport volumes of passed the threshold of 3 million teu in Q1/2020 (3.053 million teu), a 4.8 % increase compared to Q1/2019, freight rates went up by USD 15 per teu from USD 1,079 to USD 1,094. Altogether, the first quarter of 2020 was friendly to the... more
Humanitarian hubs and depots around the world
The UN Word Food Programme (WFP) has chosen Guangzhou in southern China and not the Alibaba metropolis Hangzhou (see ITJ 19-20/2020, p 14) as the place to set up one of its eight global humanitarian hubs. These locations form a hubs-and-spokes system that will route medical... more
Will Maersk weather the storm?
A.P. Moeller-Maersk showed a better performance in this year's first quarter than expected. Nevertheless, the Danish container shipping company warned of a 20-25% decrease in volumes in the second quarter. Maersk posted a USD 197 million net profit in the first three months... more