Having recently returned from IATA’s World Cargo Symposium has provided much food for thought. The event could be criticised for being repetitive in one particular regard – navel gazing. It seems the last few editions of the annual event have seen a fair degree of not just navel gazing, but hand wringing. But to be fair, the industry has clearly been struggling – a lethal combination of changing market circumstances and severe foot dragging on issues that should have been dealt with so very long ago. Cargo 2000 – need I say more?
It wasn’t always like this. I remember attending my first WCS in Rome back roughly seven years ago. While I can’t quite remember the event in absolute detail, I do recall the atmosphere was a fair bit more upbeat, obviously reflecting the environment at the time. But, and here’s the kicker – the keynote address for the event was delivered by a senior Maersk shipping executive on the topic of modal shift! I doubt at that time his address and the topic itself drew much much serious consideration by the delegates and I’m sure the industry is all more worse off because of it.
I do have to say the Shanghai event was a bit different in the sense that while the hand wringing is sadly still going on, there is a more palatable sense of not just the urgency of fixing the bad plumbing in the industry, but that the right pipes, wrenches and Teflon tape is being gathered for the metaphorical fix.
IATA also needs to be congratulated for bringing more shippers – yes it does seem rather obvious right – into the event. There weren’t many, or if there were they were flying under the radar, but at least there were some. Along with this sharper focus on the customer was the presentation of the results of a survey conducted amongst shippers. The survey had its clear flaws – I mean you ask shippers of their view of services in the industry and you make no differentiation between the general air cargo carriers and the integrators!? That rather skewed some of the responses and probably means the picture is worse than the survey reveals on the surface.
And speaking of shippers, one in particular was very prominent and perhaps even ‘over-exposed’. We congratulate IATA for convincing Robert Mellin, head of distribution logistics for technology network firm Ericsson to participate. Mellin delivered a nononsense, no-holds-barred, almost ruthless assessment of what he sees as being wrong in the industry. I can guarantee you, no one was dosing off when he was on stage. But what was equally interesting, was to see the spirited defence of the industry by a number in the audience.
We’ll leave it at that point, as a teaser, because we’ve run out of space! On that note we also want to express our profound sadness that Payload Asia will be shifting to a largely digital-only product starting with the next issue as a direct result of escalating distribution costs. After 30 years of being published in print form we can’t help but be melancholy about the transition though. The magazine will still be available for those who wish to pay for the postage and our circulation department can help you with that and we will continue the monthly magazine but in electronic form.
On the other hand, change is also a good thing, and with this change we will have more resources to develop our existing digital products including our website which is currently undergoing a long overdue revamp and develop new ones. So do please stay tuned and happy reading.
