Africa’s Empty Holds
The wrong kind of growth In August 2026, African airlines added 14 percent more cargo capacity while demand grew 3 percent. Their cargo holds were 36.5 percent full, the emptiest of any region on earth,…
Logistics
Logistics
The Feeder Fleet Split
A terminal built to move boxes between ships has had to create something it was never designed to need: a road gate. There was no exit for trucks, yet movements rose from about 100 a…
The Empty Shelf Attack
A shopper walks into a supermarket and sees gaps along the shelves. The spaces expose the white backing, with a few packets pushed forward. Nothing appears broken. The lights work and tills are open, and…
The Port Race for Africa’s Hinterland
In July 2026, a terminal in Dar es Salaam handled 46,582 containers, more than three times the 13,779 it handled in May 2024. The striking detail is not the speed of that change, a 3.4…
Inventory Planning Gets Its Agent
A shipment can be physically close to a warehouse and still be financially invisible. The carton has left the supplier, the carrier has scanned it, and the receiving team has not yet made it available…
Suez Reopens, Network Risk Remains
The strangest part of the Red Sea crisis is not that ships are returning to Suez. It is that some are returning while the security risk is still hanging over the route. The planning rule…
The Emergency Surcharge That Never Left
In March, a carrier told its customers in Greece that weekly fuel reviews were an “exceptional measure”. Six months later, the weekly mechanism is still running, and the truck surcharge sits at 15 percent. What…
The Maersk Pricing Pivot
During the worst of the container boom, Maersk did the opposite of every other carrier. While rivals pushed emergency surcharges and spot rates climbed toward record highs, the Danish line held its average freight rates…
The Black Sea’s Quiet Stranglehold
The narrowest point of the Bosphorus is 700 metres wide. Seven football pitches, end to end. Every ship that enters or leaves the Black Sea must pass through that gap, past the skyline of Istanbul,…