On February 2, the Italian-Czech Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized an online meeting where the guest Petr Rožek, former executive director of the Federation of Transport and Logistics of the Czech Republic, illustrated the trends and perspectives in the sector of logistics.
Especially in naval transport Rožek pointed out strong imbalances and negative trends, fully manifest in the last period but which were already present even before Covid. However, the guest pointed out that the increase in prices seen in recent months is mainly due to reasons related to the pandemic: delayed demand in the United States, poor management of ports (which have caused the blocking of millions of containers ) and China’s zero-tolerance Covid policy.
Maritime transport was not the only one to suffer: the pandemic also hit air transport hard, which made extensive use of mixed freight/passenger flights. With the decline in passenger flights due to limitations, there have been numerous cases of inefficiencies.
One of the solutions adopted to cope with the delays that were going to accumulate was transport by rail: “The railway recorded a record last year: one million containers transported“, indicated Rožek, especially in the mobilization of goods between China and Europe. (even if this means is still cumbersome due to the numerous transfers required and due to the instability in Kazakhstan).
Also noteworthy among the critical factors for this situation is Brexit, which has made the movement of goods to and from the UK very difficult. For this reason, many companies are even considering abandoning the English market.
As for road transport to and from Italy, the biggest problem remains that of the Brenner Pass.
The Austrian Tyrol intends to limit the capacity of that motorway artery through the quota for heavy vehicles. Numerous, however, the mobilizations against this maneuver.
Despite the criticality of the situation, the host said that the logistics have withstood the weight of the pandemic, ensuring the availability of basic goods and keeping the industry in business. Thanks to this challenging period, the sector could even increase its resilience, as long as the tendency to reduce prices and increase speed decreases.
This year, however, there will continue to be high prices, but stabilization should be seen by the end of 2022.
Source: http://www.camic.cz
Sources of images: Storyset.com
