Slump can help cut supply chain waste

Freight forwarders and shippers should use the current slowdown in volumes as a chance to reconfigure supply chains, according to high ranking members of European forwarder association Clecat.

Jean-Claude Delen, president of Clecat and MD of DHL Belgium and Luxembourg, and Marco Sorgetti, director general of Clecat, told IFW that forwarders should use the current slowdown as an opportunity to make supply chains more cost efficient.

"This crisis is a challenge but also an opportunity at the same time, " said Delen.

"We [forwarders] should take it as an opportunity to rethink the way we do business and we have to do this together with the shippers.

"As an architect of transport, if you get told to use a certain mode [of transport] and it is signed into the contract, you have to take it as it is.

"What we would like is to have more freedom to negotiate with shippers, if they give us a window in which they want their goods delivered, we will find for them the best possible mode of transport, the most economical one and the most environmentally friendly one - that’s our job. But if they tell us, ’you have to do it by truck’, then we have to do it by truck." Sorgetti added forwarders could also be more proactive and convince shippers to change their supply chain.

"We have the time to think about what we do, " said Sorgetti. "Normally the pressure is such that, frankly speaking, when you are in the middle of November, and you have to make deliveries, you don’t have time to think about what you are doing.

"You [forwarders] have got to be proactive and go back to your clients and say, ’you’ve requested that type of shipment, but would you consider doing it another way?’ It’s a new awareness that has to be built between shippers and forwarders." Despite these positives, Delen admitted the credit crisis had affected forwarders’ volumes.

He explained the usual peak season running from the summer to the Chinese New Year had failed to materialise.

He pointed to the latest figures from Iata, which show airfreight declined 7.9% in October while the year-to-date figure was 0.8% down on last year.

But he added this may be partly down to shippers doing a better job at planning their supply chains by getting goods to market earlier using sea instead of air.