BIFA News
IAG opens new Heathrow cargo handling facility Ian Matheson, from Impress Communications, reviews some recent news that might impact on Members’ business
IN BUSINESS Women in Aviation and Logistics (WAL) has launched its second mentorship programme, bringing 51 industry professionals together for four months of experience sharing and learning. HM Customs is moving Exports from CHIEF to the Customs Declaration Service (CDS) later this year. It issued a notice in early June on what traders should do now to prepare, which can be viewed at: https://bifa.org/information- guidance/technical-informati on/the-customs-declaration- service-cds/ OVERLAND The HGV levy, abandoned at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, is to be reintroduced from 1 August with a new emphasis on emissions, weight and time spent in the UK. The Department for Transport (DfT) says vehicles of 12 tonnes or more driving on motorways or A roads must pay the levy. A consortium called Escalate, with 37 members from 13 different countries around Europe, is working to develop and build a number of pilot battery electric vehicles (BEV) for a project aimed at producing the next generation of HGVs. Five pilot vehicles are due to be built over the next three years as part of this €19million project. DP World has begun its Modal Shift Programme in the UK, which is a major initiative to directly incentivise customers to move their imported goods off the road and onto rail. It claims this has the potential to prevent an estimated 30,000 tonnes of CO 2 being emitted per year, more than three times the total emissions of the company’s logistics hub at Southampton, where it will be trialled from September for an initial period of 12 months.
IN THE AIR IAG Cargo has opened a new cargo handling facility (pictured)at Heathrow, which will serve as the airline’s home for handling premium loose
regulate freight movements and allocations. The facility has 11 new landside doors, allowing even faster engagement for drivers to collect or drop off cargo. East Midlands Airport, the UK’s second-largest air cargo hub behind London Heathrow, is proposing to ban the noisiest aircraft — most of which are freighters — from 23:00 to 07:00 beginning in 2024 as part of its new, five-year Draft Noise Action Plan. ON THE OCEAN Equipment surpluses are proving to be more of a challenge for container shipping lines, which face
huge storage bills from depots for their mountains of empty container stocks around the world. Now lines are looking to retire ageing owned- containers to the second-hand market and return as much equipment as possible to leasing companies. However, both strategies are taxing the skills of equipment controllers as the second- hand market is itself swamped with surplus equipment, while the leasing companies enjoy an average for unexpired lease agreements of about five years. ON THE QUAYSIDE Peel Ports is to deliver a 240,000 sq ft multi-user facility at Alexandra Docks within the company’s Port of Liverpool development located in Bootle. It has appointed Glencar to construct the £28 million development, which will be used for the handling and storage of a variety of commodities, both unitised and non-unitised requiring indoor storage, as well as having a dedicated quay and cranes to optimise vessel discharge. The Hutchison-owned UK port of Felixstowe is to roll out a 100-strong fleet of autonomous battery-powered trucks in September, having struck a deal with manufacturer Westwell, via which it has had 15 AI- controlled trucks operating at its Terminal D in Thailand’s Laem Chabang Port since 2020. It says that the new trucks will increase the efficiency and operational consistency of its container handling, as well as making a significant contribution to decarbonising operations at the port.
shipments. It will enable a doubling of the cargo volumes managed daily as a result of
bespoke IT systems and systems integration to
4 | July 2023
www.bifa.org
Made with FlippingBook Annual report maker