Neolink Announcement – Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) Seasonal Measures 2023 to 2024 – 30.8.23

Neolink Announcement – Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) Seasonal Measures 2023 to 2024 – 30.8.23

 

Dear Valued Clients,

 

We hope this message finds you well.

 

As a trusted global freight forwarder serving Australian importers and exporters, we are committed to keeping you informed about critical updates affecting your shipments.

 

With the new season rapidly approaching, we want to ensure you are aware of the latest developments regarding the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB) seasonal measures (all information below is also on the Department of Agriculture’s BMSB Resource Hub)

 

What's New for the 2023-2024 Season:

1. Uzbekistan Added to Target Risk Country List: Please note the addition of Uzbekistan to the list of target risk countries.
2. BMSB Frequently Asked Questions Webpage: A dedicated webpage to address your most common BMSB-related queries.

 

BMSB Seasonal Measures Overview:

• BMSB measures apply to goods manufactured in or shipped from target risk countries between 1 September and 30 April.
• The Ocean Bill of Lading's "shipped on board" date determines when goods are considered shipped.
• We continuously monitor and adjust measures based on BMSB detections and evolving risk pathways.

 

BMSB Measures for Goods:

• Target high-risk goods require mandatory treatment.
• Target risk goods are subject to random inspection.
• Goods not in these categories may be subject to measures if packed with high-risk or risk goods.
• Iso-tanks and bulk-in-holds are exempt.

 

Treatment of Target High-Risk Goods:

• Treatment in target risk countries must be by an 'approved' provider. (Current list of Offshore Treatment Providers as of 30.8.23)
• Containerized goods are treated onshore; break bulk goods are directed for export.
• Sealing declarations are permitted under specific circumstances.

 

Containerized Goods (FCL, FCX):

• Sealed six-sided containers with high-risk goods can be treated onshore or offshore.
• Effective container-level packing is essential.
• AEPCOMM arrangements are available for certain cases.

 

Break Bulk Goods:

• All high-risk goods shipped as break bulk must be treated offshore.
• Onshore treatment is not allowed.
• AEPCOMM arrangements are available.

 

LCL and FAK Containers:

• Managed at the container level for BMSB risk before deconsolidation.
• Further processing at the Full Import Declaration (FID) level for other biosecurity interventions.

 

Known Risk Pathways and Supply Chains:

• Goods from known risk pathways with prior BMSB detections may undergo treatment or inspections.

 

Treatment in Australia and New Zealand:

• BMSB measures apply to goods imported into Australia.
• No cross-treatment between Australia and New Zealand is permitted.

 

Target Risk Countries:

The following countries are classified as target risk (as of 30.8.23):

 

Albania

Andorra

Armenia

Austria

Azerbaijan

Belgium

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bulgaria

Canada

Croatia

Czechia

France

Japan (heightened vessel surveillance only).

Georgia

Germany

Greece

Hungary

Italy

Kazakhstan

Kosovo

Liechtenstein

Luxembourg

Montenegro

Moldova

Netherlands

Poland

Portugal

Republic of North Macedonia

Romania

Russia

Serbia

Slovakia

Slovenia

Spain

Switzerland

Türkiye

Ukraine

United States of America

Uzbekistan (new)

 

The following countries have been identified as emerging risk countries for the -BMSB risk season and may be selected for a random onshore inspection:

 

United Kingdom and China

 

China – random inspections will apply to goods shipped between 1 September to 31 December (inclusive)

United Kingdom – random inspections will apply to goods shipped between 1 December to 30 April (inclusive)

 

In addition to the target high risk goods, chapters 39, 94 and 95 will be subject to random inspections for emerging risk countries only.

 

Emerging Risk Countries:

Emerging risk countries include the United Kingdom and China, with random inspections during specific timeframes.

 

Target Goods Subject to Measures:

• Target high-risk and risk goods are identified by specific tariff classifications. (BMSB Resource Hub Link for full list)
• Other goods within containers with high-risk or risk goods are subject to measures.

 

Measures for Vessels:

• All ro-ro vessels in target risk countries between 1 September and 30 April will undergo heightened surveillance.
• The Vessel Seasonal Pest Scheme offers exemptions for approved vessels.

 

Approved BMSB Treatment Options:

Three treatment options are available: Heat, Methyl Bromide, and Sulfuryl Fluoride. (BMSB Resource Hub Link for full list)

 

Treatment Minimum Standards:

Providers must adhere to minimum standards to ensure effective treatment.

 

Onshore and Offshore Treatment Providers:

Treatment providers in target risk countries must be registered and 'approved. (BMSB Resource Hub Link for full list)

 

Neolink does not have single set approach to BMSB Season for all of our customers, this is done on a customer-by-customer basis depending on the supply chain you run and as such we may present/recommend different solutions accordingly.

 

Our team will be proactively reaching out to customers that import from target risk countries and even countries that are emerging risk to warn of the challenges that may be incurred from random inspections during this period. We highly recommend to all of our customers that they allow for some time within their supply chains to account for either origin/destination fumigation and random inspections being incurred if your company imports commodities from countries that fall into any of the key categories above.

 

Neolink and all of our team members are here to work with you during this period and ensure your supply chains adhere to the government’s requirements, as well as limit as much as possible the disruption to your business.

 

If you have any questions surrounding the BMSB period, please feel free to contact your Customer Operations Coordinator or your Business Development Manager.

 

Best regards,

Neolink Marketing Team

 

Neolink Announcement – Carriers Planning To Take Action on China to Australia Trade Lane Shipping – 8.5.23

Monday 8th of May 2023

Dear Valued Clients,

We hope this message finds you well.

As a Freight Forwarder and your Global Supply Chain Partner, we understand the importance of timely and reliable shipping services, and we are committed to keeping you informed about the current developments in the China to Australia trade lane

As you are aware, the first quarter of this year brought some relief from high freight rates and low schedule reliability. The Shanghai Container Freight Index (USD/TEU), which tracks all export sea freight rates from the world's busiest container port, demonstrates how far rates have fallen since the beginning of 2022 to now, with overall rates at less than 20% of what they were during the height of COVID.

See below (source: SCFI):

However, this has led to the lowest freight rates from China to Australia in a very long time, and now rates are well below 2019 freight rates. This is due to an increase in supply of new capacity entering the market, such as new vessels, services, and empty containers, followed by a drop in demand "post-COVID" due to inflationary pressures that most economies are now facing.

See below (source: Sea Intelligence):

Currently, it costs more money to pay the ports in Australia to remove the cargo from the vessel and make it available for collection from the wharf (Destination Port Charges on your invoices) than it costs to ship a container from China to Australia. While we understand that many in the industry may be pleased with the low freight rates, the shipping lines are doing everything they can to increase the price of the freight rates, especially on the CN to AU Trade Lane, which is well below break-even for any shipping line carrying cargo to Australia from China.

Due to all of the above factors, the shipping lines are doing everything within their control to increase their prices by utilising the supply side of the equation. As a result, they are planning to take some real action on upcoming sailings as we head into May. Our China Branch Office informed us late last week via their Procurement Department, which deals with the shipping lines in China on all of our contracts to Australia, that the carriers are planning to cancel or "blank" sailings coming to Australia earlier over the coming weeks.

Please find below sailings that are being planned to be cancelled by all carriers. Since all vessels are calling into Shanghai, they might come from Qingdao and then go to Shenzhen. This impacts most vessels/services coming to Australia:

This is the biggest scale of action we have seen for many years with regards to blank/cancelled sailings on the CN to AU Trade Lane. This is on top of the fact that A3X and CA3 services were totally removed from the market earlier in the year.

The belief from the shipping lines is that if the market isn't pushed up after these actions, carriers will do more blank sailings like they have in CN-EU and CN-US, and CN to other trade lanes. Further to the information we have received on the blank sailings, we are also being informed by most of the shipping lines that they are planning to introduce a “Rate Restoration surcharge” USD250.00/USD500.00 PER 20GP/40HQ from China to Australia with effective date 21 May 2023.

If you have any orders with us currently waiting to be shipped in May your Customer Operations Coordinator or Business Development Manager will be in contact if it has been impacted by the above cancelled sailings.

Just like we did during the COVID period our team will work with you proactively to look at other options and seek our alternatives where feasible to keep you cargo moving – all of which will be updated in our Digital Logixboard Platform.

However, we cannot do that if we do not have your orders in our system – if you have anything in production in China that is ready in May and we are not aware, please let us know.

We can be proactive in providing different options and solutions to help best navigate the above cancelled sailings if we have advanced notice of more than a week on goods readiness.

If you have any questions at all about any of the above, please feel free to also call any member of the Operations and Business Development Team.

Best regards,

Neolink Marketing Team

Cosco RR notification from North East Asia to Australia -Effective from 21st May. 2023

OOCL Customer Advisory - Rate Restoration - North East Asia to Australia Trade - 22nd May 2023

ANL RR NOTICE - MAY 23

Neolink End of Year Supply Chain Update

 

Friday 21^st of October 2022

 

Dear Valued Clients,

I hope you are all well and 2022 has been better than the past couple of years.

Before we get into the update, I want to say a big thank you to you all for your continued support not just the past 12 months, but also for some over the past five years as we have grown the Neolink business – thank you again!

In this End of Year Supply Chain Update we will be covering off the below:

1. Global Freight Rate and Manufacturing Update
2. Sea Freight Sailing Reliability and Delay Updates to AU/NZ
3. EOY and Chinese New Year Planning
4. New ETA/ETD Email Notifications on Neolink Logixboard

Global Freight Rate and Manufacturing Update

As most of you are aware, Freight rates globally have been dropping since the beginning of January and have more progressively been heading towards the $1,500 per 20 / $3,000 per 40 mark on the FBX Index for the FAK Spot market.

See below:

https://fbx.freightos.com/

 

Despite the drop in freight rates, we are still significantly above where the market was pre-covid and the AUD taking a hit on the USD has found it hard to slow the impact on inflation across a number of industry sectors. As all of our existing and new customers are aware, Neolink FAK rates move with the market across all trade lanes and most of you will be seeing your rates dropping on new quotations every week, as well as invoices on current shipments. Please be aware however that if you do have invoices hitting your inbox now that this is based on freight rates at the time of departure and in a lot of instances depending on the port of loading, rates could have moved significantly since that time. If you have any questions on current market pricing, please contact your Customer Operations Coordinator or relevant Business Development Manager.

Also please note that Neolink holds USD and EUR accounts and are able to generate invoices in these currencies to assist with everyone’s FX hedging strategies.

Freight rates have been dropping mainly due to a couple of key reasons globally: firstly, being the increase in more vessels and services hitting the market as container volumes soften globally – please see below:

The second key driver has been the softening in container demand as global manufacturing has fell for the first time since August 2020 according to the global manufacturing PMI and which in turn is being driven by inflation globally:

 

The million-dollar question for everyone is at what point will demand hold and where will freight rates finish as we see central banks around the world continue to increase interest rates. What is masking a lot of the freight rate movements at the moment will be end of year planning for a lot of importers and exporters as we head into the Christmas period, which everyone is forecasting will be “softer” than previous years.

 

Sea Freight Sailing Reliability and Delay Updates to AU/NZ

Since the beginning of this year, we have steadily seen carrier performance and global schedule reliability slowly improve up to just under 50% as we see the market start to somewhat normalise. That being said this does still mean that over 50% of sailing schedules are not on time and in addition to that we are still seeing vessels arrive with delays of still 6 days during transit times alone – although this has also improved since the beginning of the year. This is without considering any of the delays on berthing at the terminals and in still quite a few instances we are seeing vessels taking longer to move through ports, or still rotating at the last minute which can blow out ETA’s out by up to two weeks in some instances from Asian ports.

Neolink have contracts at origin and destination with all of the major shipping lines – our priority is to always ensure our customers have a range of different options whether it be paying a premium/direct service or cheaper/longer transit options.

All in all, we are seeing all of the major shipping lines improving in their schedule reliability, albeit still significantly behind pre covid times.

 

With regards to New Zealand the issue is much more challenging due to a number of key reasons. In June of this year two workers died on the ports in April due to a workplace accident and this has resulted in heightened safety regulations impacting port productivity. In addition, we are seeing that shipping lines as a result are running extremely behind schedule with delays into NZ due to the congestion and this is the worst it has been since the COVID Pandemic began – please see below P44 delay update:

 

 

End of Year & Chinese New Year Planning

 

Despite all of the above lingering market challenges that occur across all aspect of the supply chain; we still do have things that we can control.

One of those things is the Order Management Process and how we pre-plan/coordinate the supply chain proactively with your overseas suppliers that can help us in reducing the risk/navigating the market conditions with your shipments.

Recently we completed a full analysis across the past three years across 10,000 + shipments and this is what we learned:

• Customers that share their factory purchase order data (EDI, excel csv or even basic email)l 4+ weeks ahead of ready date have the best performing supply chains
• More of our customers are sharing their data earlier with us and are planning a lot further in advance than previously – 29% provided data 4+ weeks in advance (up from 12% pre covid)
• We still have 53% of our customers providing us with orders with less than 10 days’ notice of being ready – these orders have a higher risk of delay and rolling than pre planned shipments
• Based on China to AU alone customers that provide 4+ weeks’ notice has cargo arrive 5.2 days earlier than the industry average transit time CN to AU

All of the above gives us more time to plan with your factories and allow our origin offices more time to book space typically on quicker/direct services that are in higher demand when earlier notice is provided. For all of our customers that still do not have Christmas orders into our system, I ask that you please reach out to us and share them with our team, in addition our team are proactively reaching out to our customers everyday about your orders anyway. If anything, urgent does come in, please highlight this to the relevant team member for us to assist over the Christmas period as our team will be working excluding the public holidays.

Although it seems some time away; Chinese New Year is falling in 2023 on Sunday January 2022 and will be starting the year of the rabbit commencing traditionally 16 days of celebrations lasting until the Lantern Festival on February 5^th, 2023. As office closure periods etc are announced we will certainly be updating you and making you aware, we understand some of your suppliers might be closing production earlier or later so please keep us in the loop.

Despite the market improving, we are still experiencing delays at terminals and transit times, so please keep this in mind for CNY to avoid delays ideally, we would like to have cargo ready by the end of the first week of January to ensure we do our best to risk mitigate delays/challenges with shipping.

Your respective Business Development Manager, Customer Operations Team or one of our GM’s will be speaking to you in the coming weeks regarding CNY for all of those respective clients.

 

New ETA/ETD Email Notifications on Neolink Logixboard

To those customers of ours that do not currently use Neolink Logixboard I strongly advise that you sign up and find out more from your Customer Operations or BDM. The platform is free of charge to all of our customers and has some amazing functionality to not only track your shipments, but see live vessel GPS data, plan your factory orders and have your accounts team find all of the relevant shipment documentation – for general info please feel free to find more info on our site:  https://neolink.au/neolink-logixboard/

More and more functionality is coming to this platform – so please feel free to provide feedback as this allows us to provide feedback to the R&D Team that are constantly looking to improve its features and functionality.

NEW this month to Neolink LogixBoard is Automated Email Notifications for planned ETA/ETD changes on your shipments.

In order to enable the notifications please follow the below instructions

 

Settings —> Notifications

The new notifications we add will be turned off by default.

To receive these email notifications:

Navigate to Settings, then click on Notifications

Tick the box next to the notifications you want to subscribe to.

 

 

 

Being transparent is extremely important for everything that we do here at Neolink and providing access to all of this information is critical to ensuring our customers can act according to the most up to date information possible. That being said, please be aware that in a lot of instances you will be finding out via automated updates based on shipping line data – some of the time we may be aware of a delay before the shipping line and update you accordingly or alternatively may occur without any notification at all from the shipping line. In the event this does occur your Customer Operations contact will endeavour to find out more information and ascertain cause, impact, and provide you with more detail as quickly as we possibly can.

Once again, thank you to everyone for your support to date and if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to your relevant Neolink contact.

Best regards,

Neolink Marketing Team