Tight airfreight capacity will hamper post-coronavirus recovery – DHL chief

Frankfurt-270515 Hauptversammlung Deutsche Post DHL, Frankfurt am Main, Jahrhunderthalle Deutsche Post DHL/Bernd Georg

The Wall Street Journal has published an interview with DHL’s Frank Appel, who is looking at the next stage of the Covid challenge. He predicts that air freight capacity won’t keep up with demand when it returns, and says supply chains will have to take longer.

He said customers should “think about their supply chain and they will take more lead times for the inventory, if they have enough in stock, and put it on shipping lines, even for higher-value products. The capacity on the sea vessels is significantly larger than the airfreight.”

He also believes that this is not the end of globalisation, but perhaps the start of a new structure for supply chains, which will become more resilient, spreading sourcing among more factories – but not all re-shoring.

Worth a read.