Sea Freight News

Sea Freight- The Unsung Hero of the Transportation Industry  

Traditionally, road freight has dominated the UK transportation industry. However, according to experts, sea freight offers significant advantages over road transport. They believe that these advantages will gradually erode the industry’s reliance on the roads forcing it to re-evaluate the benefits of moving goods by water

In the UK, around 2 billion tonnes of freight is transported annually. However, of this amount only 7% is transported by water whilst the majority is moved by road. Sea freight is frequently more efficient when it comes to transporting heavy cargo over longer distances. Therefore, with regards to tonne-kilometres, sea freight makes up around 26% of all cargo transported in the UK. In fact more than 130 million tonnes of cargo is moved by sea in the UK on an annual basis.

In recent years sea freight has been gaining favour in the UK transportation industry over road freight for a number of reasons.

First, the issue of road congestion has lead to questions about noise and preservation of the environment with regards to road freight. After all, road freight causes high levels of both noise and chemical pollution. Sea freight on the other hand is perceived to be relatively environmentally friendly and does not pose the same noise problems as road freight.

More importantly however, is the fact that sea freight in the UK is much safer than road freight. According to official statistics, although there have been a number of improvements in road safety levels over the last few decades, sea transportation still has much lower death rates from accidents than road transport. Indeed, in the UK, nearly all passenger transport deaths occur on roads rather than on water.

Given that sea freight is significantly more environmentally friendly than road freight, that issues of road congestion will become more not less relevant and that water transport is much safer than road transport, the sea freight industry in the UK is likely to become increasingly important over the next few years.

The Sea Freight Industry is Failing to Meet its Schedules

A recent survey of the reliability of scheduling in the sea freight industry has revealed worrying results. The survey examined sea freight schedules on a worldwide basis. It demonstrated that over 40% of the world’s cargo carrying ships arrived at their destination at least a day late. In many cases ships arrived in port well over several days late.

The survey derived results from an examination of 3,300 ships arriving on 23 east-west and north-south routes. It was part of a quarterly review of the global sea freight industry.

Although the survey showed that nearly 60% of all container ships arrived on time, the overall results were not inspiring. 22% of all the container ships arrived a day later than their scheduled arrival date. Moreover, 21% of the ships that were tracked arrived more than one day late.

The results from the survey also showed that there were large variations in performance between the different sea freight operators. Between December last year and April this year, on time arrival ranged between 0% and 91%.

Chinese sea freight companies were least likely to arrive on time, according to the results of the survey.

The implications of the results generated by the survey are very concerning to all those working in the sea freight industry. They show that many companies within the industry do not offer the reliable service that their customers require.

It is true that there are external and uncontrollable factors that can affect a ship’s schedule. For instance port congestion can impact on arrival times. However, the fact that companies’ ability to meet schedules varied considerably even on the same route demonstrates that these factors are not the main problem.