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Air freight cashes in on cross-channel chaos hit by strikes, migrants

THE summer-long crisis over illegal migrants and striking French ferry workers has hampered truck access to Dover and Calais, thus diverting freight to more costly air cargo, reports Atlanta area Air Cargo World.

Protests have disrupted MyFerryLink, the freight and passenger ferry service across the Channel, which has caused supply chain delays for European manufacturers, said the report.

Consequently, the United Kingdom's logistics firm Priority Freight has received a 300 per cent increase in air freight bookings, moving cargo that otherwise would have been delivered by trucks, said its managing director Neal Williams.

Consolidated shipments that would have been hauled by truck, bumped up charters for large aircraft by 600 per cent in July. Although air freight costs more, in this case, it's saving manufacturers' money by circumventing long delays, Mr Williams said.

As busy as the port was earlier this summer, demand for emergency logistics didn't reach crisis proportions until "Operation Stack" was implemented on June 24.

Operation Stack is an emergency procedure used by Kent police and the port of Dover to force trucks to park along the sides of the M20 motorway when services across the English channel are disrupted.

Mr Williams estimates that emergency logistics can prevent losses of US$1.6 million per hour for car manufacturers, by keeping production lines running during periods of disruption.

"August is traditionally the quietest manufacturing period of the year, when UK plants cease production for a few weeks," he said.

"We anticipate that if the disruption continues into autumn and beyond, once production starts again, there will be a significantly higher cost to the UK supply chain."

Mr Williams cited figures from the Freight Transport Association that estimate this summer's troubles have cost the freight haulage industry US$387.9 million.