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Fulfilling a time-sensitive delivery is about more than just finding the right transport. Door-to-door services often require a complex logistical process to be handled, involving everything from collection, specialised loading equipment and airport arrangements to flight permissions, goods screening and booking in for delivery.
Here we’re committed to managing every aspect of your transportation, offering flexible solutions that are tailored to your exact requirements. Whatever the geography, size, weight, deadline, or mode of transport, you can choose our service with the confidence that we can deliver.
In addition to providing reliable global shipping services, we’ll also take care of the finer details, arranging for any necessary documentation and permits to be supplied, as well as obtaining customs clearance, providing comprehensive tracking, and offering 24/7 warehousing if required.
Our service not only provides complete control throughout every stage of the shipment, it also delivers the utmost security and transparency thanks to our specially developed transportation management system, so you always know what’s going on. Where customs clearance is required, we’ll validate your information and paperwork for every consignment, ensuring there are no avoidable delays. After a thorough, methodical check, we’ll submit your information to the appropriate customs authority.
Meanwhile, our Coventry warehouse offers a contingency or long-term storage solution for your shipment and operates 24/7, enabling you to move your products whenever you need.
Take advantage of the following additional services that we offer for a complete and hassle-free experience, door to door.
If it’s a comprehensive and reliable door-to-door shipping service you’re in need of, get in touch with our team today.
It is a common scenario that parts are manufactured in one location before being transported across countries or continents to reach the assembly line where they become part of an end product. In the automotive industry, this process relies on accurate and timely sequencing, without which this fragile chain can easily break creating financial and reputational harm.
One recent example of this was a volume vehicle manufacturer who makes parts at its Serbian factory for distribution to its network of production plants, including one in East London, South Africa. This regular shipment usually involves road transport from the Serbian factory to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport where the goods are then flown to O.R. Tambo International Airport. However, issues at the Serbian-Hungarian border meant the goods would be delayed and potentially halt South African production.
Priority Freight received a call from the manufacturer on a Thursday evening, stressing the urgency of the shipment and need to avoid manufacturing delays and associated costs to the business. Priority Freight immediately formed a response team to devise suitable alternative shipping methods and arrange delivery of the 890kg of parts to the South African factory before Monday morning.
Overnight on Thursday, Priority Freight’s experts liaised with colleagues, ground agents and carriers worldwide to have the shipment back on track and by Friday morning a truck was waiting to collect the parts from the Serbian factory. Rather than exit Serbia by road and face border delays, the goods were taken to Belgrade airport where they were loaded onto a waiting ATR charter aircraft and flown to Oostende in Belgium. From there the parts were transferred to another truck which drove to Amsterdam Schiphol airport to meet a long-haul commercial cargo flight bound for Johannesburg.
After a flight time of 11 hours the cargo flight landed at O.R. Tambo International Airport on Saturday evening, less than 48 hours after the parts were collected from Serbia. A twin-prop Metro plane then completed the final 600 miles from Johannesburg to East London arriving at 03:30 local time on Sunday morning, in plenty of time to be unloaded and in place for the factory to recommence production the following day.
The six most hard-hit nations – China, Korea, Italy, Japan, US and Germany – account for 60% of the world’s manufacturing and half of the world’s manufactured exports. As the virus originated from China, and they reacted so quickly, with no air traffic to or from the country, it became near impossible to source the necessary components to continue manufacturing processes around the world.
The supply disruptions hindering production had a substantial knock-on effect, significantly slowing world trade. Already we have seen the number of exports fall in the most severely hit nations as well as the number of imports fall in their trade partners.
The automotive sector has been particularly disrupted by breaks in the international supply chain, causing OEMs and suppliers from all nations to pause production and introduce temporary layoff measures for its staff (e.g. furlough and ‘Force Majeure’). For example, a shortage of parts coming from China forced Korean carmaker, Hyundai, to shut all its car plants in Korea in February. While others avoided closure for as long as they could, by flying emergency supplies from China in suitcases, but inevitably closed their plants in March.
In response to the Government’s call for help, many manufacturers changed production lines to manufacture personal protective equipment (PPE) – such as masks, shields, gowns, gloves, hand sanitisers – and medical equipment, making the CAD files open source to share with other firms so they may also manufacture them.
The critical global health crisis has brought about the biggest logistics challenges that Priority Freight has ever seen. During the pandemic, Priority Freight has not only supported automotive clients but also governments, local authorities and medical companies to ensure their goods arrive as quickly as possible, including delivering PPE into France, Germany, Sweden and the UK. It has been particularly challenging to not only source the scarce uplift from China but also to deal with severe customs delays, with some queues of nearly two days long caused by the necessary changes to customs procedures.
For example, the Chinese Customs put in place very strict regulations for all masks (surgical and protective) to trace the origin and licenses of all products exported by traders and producers. They have been checking the origin, license and certifications, and labelling are all correct and in accordance with regulations and carrying out detailed inspections of the content of every box to check the material inside matches with the documents.
In addition to these challenging delays, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) restricted international flights to one per week, making the task of sourcing uplift from China itself to be even more difficult. The market has become very competitive in terms of availability and causing daily fluctuations in pricing.
To compensate, many airlines have been increasing capacity by utilising cargo-only passenger flights and removing seats to make additional space. Qatar Airways even, on 23rd April 2020, set a new aviation record with 136 freighter flights on the same day.
