A new sea-air terminal in Mombasa is aiming to more than halve the transit time for goods moving between China and West Africa.

Under development by Astral Aviation, the terminal will be the first in Africa to offer sea-air connectivity, as cargo demand within the continent, which includes 16 landlocked countries, is expected to substantially increase over the next decade.

Astral CEO Sanjeev Gadhia told delegates at last week’s World Cargo Summit in Abu Dhabi: “On a purely ocean freight basis, it takes 66 days for deliveries from China to reach Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, but with this sea-air route, the first for the continent, we will be able to deliver goods in under 30 days.”

While the latest IATA figures show a contraction in airfreight demand, compared with pandemic and pre-pandemic years, volumes from China are expected to climb, long-term.

Mr Gadhia said that, while the development of Mombasa would be the first, Astral was already in the process of identifying additional sea-air terminals, citing Durban in South Africa and Lome in Togo as potential future sites to cater for this demand.

“Having received the concession for Mombasa, the terminal will provide a faster alternative to the sea-air model operating via Jebel Ali,” Mr Gadhia continued. “But we do not deny that there remain hurdles we will have to overcome if it is to be a true success, not least of which are regulatory problems.”

A particular concern for Astral is the lack of understanding between shipping bills of lading and airfreight’s air waybills, when it comes to customs authorities.

Robert Sutton, SVP of the free zone at Abu Dhabi Airports, which is contending with its own regulatory issues in making its sea-air offering viable, said the “path to success” depended upon a standardisation of documents and process across the modes, not just air and sea.

“As we digitise the industry, we should be able to develop a more seamless facilitation of trade, regardless of mode,” Mr Sutton said.

“There are certainly regulatory changes required to make Abu Dhabi effective on the sea-air front, but our role is to work on the creation of bonded corridors that will allow the cargo to seamlessly flow between airports, ports, and even rail terminals.”

Mr Sutton said Abu Dhabi was committed to the sea-air product, which would be seen in the support it provided on the legislative front.

Support for the product does appear to be increasing, although there have been questions raised over the issue of liability when splitting transport across different modes, but chief operating officer at Ceva Logistics Peter Penseel said: “When it comes to liability, this would not be connected to the air waybill nor to the bill of lading, the forwarder would be liable.”

Two of the three new shipping line airlines are flying to Incheon, home to South Korea’s largest airport and second largest port, in a move which could lead to sea-air operations.

MSC began twice weekly services on its Atlas Air-operated 777F on 1 January on a route that, in the past week, has also included Amsterdam, Indianapolis, Liege, Mexico City, Xiamen, and Cincinnati.

The airline, which has effectively outsourced its operations to Atlas Air, has three more 777Fs arriving, although the dates have not yet been confirmed.

Incheon Airport said the route was starting with “irregular flights twice a week, and will be expanded to regular flights within 2023”.

Maersk too is flying between Incheon and Greenville Spartanburg on a 767 operated by Amerijet, the first of three to start flying for the shipping line.

And Incheon Airport is hoping to see multimodal solutions. President & CEO Kyung Wook Kim said it “plans to strategically collaborate with cargo airlines launched by global shipping companies to lay the groundwork for creating new cargo volume, such as vitalising multimodal cargo transport by sea and air”.

He added: “We will continue to strengthen Incheon’s competitiveness in air logistics by developing new cargo terminals and attracting investment, while maintaining its second place ranking in international cargo traffic volume through expansion of logistics infrastructure and networks.”

Meanwhile Maersk Air Cargo, which is now based at Billund Airport, received permission on 20 December to transfer its US flight rights from Star Air. It will also fully integrate German forwarder Senator’s operations next month, when the Senator name will disappear.

MD of Senator, and now head of north Europe for Maersk, Jens-Ole Krenzien told DVZ Senator had some 7,000 to 8,000 tons of freight a month and 19 weekly departures from Frankfurt and Amsterdam which had been operated by Magma Aviation. Senator’s major customers, including BMW, had stayed with Maersk – as had the top executives at Senator, so customers should see little change, he added.

CMA CGM  has not signed up to Incheon – yet. After some confusion last year over its US routes, it is now operating between Paris and Chicago O Hare with an A330-200F. Two of its aircraft are flying under Qatar Airways flight codes, one between Brussels and Doha, and one taking in several other European destinations including Luxembourg, Zaragoza and Budapest.

One of its A330s, operated by Air Belgium, has been in Chateauroux since 4 January. Interestingly, although Air France said it would not begin marketing CMA’s flight operations until April, one A330F is flying under an Air France flight code, from Paris to Chicago and other European cities.

The shipping lines, which made billions during the Covid period, are now facing large-scale declines in demand and rates, while costs are rising fast. They are also facing significant rises in capacity after filling up orderbooks, while also trying to integrate the businesses they bought, as well as now running airlines.

CMA CGM’s Ceva Logistics said yesterday it had now taken over the Gefco brand, which CMA bought in July and which will now disappear from the market. Ceva has created a finished vehicle logistics organisation from Gefco’s operations and integrated its other sectors, such as contract logistics and ground transport into Ceva operations.

In a meeting between Head of Iran’s Ports and Maritime Organization (PMO) Ali-Akbar Safaei and Kazakh Ambassador to Tehran Askhat Orazbay on Monday, the two sides discussed ways of expanding maritime ties, including the establishment of a direct shipping line in Caspian Sea.

Speaking in this meeting, Safaei stressed the need for the development of logistics and maritime cooperation between the two countries and voiced PMO’s readiness for awarding maritime and port projects both in the north and south of the country to Kazakh contracting companies, the PMO portal reported.

Orazbay, for his part, pointed to a visit of Kazakhstan’s expert delegations to Iran to assess the facilities and equipment of Amirabad and Shahid Rajaei ports over the past year and said that the investment of Kazakh companies in Iran’s ports is under consideration.

Iran and Kazakhstan inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the expansion of cooperation in the agriculture and trade fields as well as industries, logistics, transportation and technology transfer in Tehran last November.

The MOU was signed by Javad Sadati-Nejad, the Iranian agriculture minister, and Zhumangarin Serik, the deputy prime minister and minister of trade and integration of Kazakhstan, who visited Tehran on top of a Kazakh delegation.

As reported, the effort of the two countries in order to increase the value of bilateral trade to about one billion dollars, based on the agreements of the presidents of the two countries, is considered in the MOU.

Kazakhstan, one of the world’s largest oil exporters, has revealed its plans to halt the export of oil products for a four-month period.

The statement issued by the Kazakh State Revenue Committee on February 8 stated that the order will come into effect 10 calendar days after the announcement.

“The ban applies to gasoline, diesel fuel, and other petroleum products with the exception of lubricants,” Interfax reported, citing the statement.

With the export ban, the country aims to protect its own domestic energy supply and to ensure that the citizens of Kazakhstan are not deprived of the energy they needed to survive.

The move extends a similar ban on oil products, which was introduced in November 2021 and later expired on May 21, 2022, a time when the country was struggling with a shortage of motor fuels.

Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest crude oil exporter globally. The country holds three percent of the world’s total oil reserves, and it is the third-largest oil producer in the Caspian region, after Russia and Iran, but has a lack of direct access to the ocean. Kazakhstan doesn’t have a pipeline to export Kazakh gas to the EU. Novorossiysk on the Black Sea is the main route to export oil from the world's largest landlocked country.

With over 70 percent of its oil exports going to the EU, Kazakhstan is already the third-largest non-OPEC supplier of the bloc, which is considered one of the most prolific markets for energy exporters, given its lack of domestic resources.

The country entered the global oil market in 1993 after the country’s government and Chevron agreed to establish a giant oil-production venture, Tengizchevroil, to produce oil in two big fields near the Caspian Sea. In 1997, Kazakhstan signed a production-sharing agreement with seven international companies, including Agip, British Gas, BP, Mobil, Shell, Statoil, and Total.

The ban in Kazakhstan came days after the EU embargo on imports of Russian fuels and the price cap on diesel and other products came into effect. On February 5, the G7+ Coalition and all EU Member States adopted further price caps for Russian seaborne crude in a bid to both deprive Moscow of a major revenue stream and curb surging global energy prices.

The embargo has been coupled with price caps for deliveries to third nations, agreed upon with the G7 in the same way that the EU and the G7 coordinated the price cap on Russian crude last year. 

So far, two price caps have been established for Russian petroleum products: one for "premium-to-crude" petroleum goods like diesel, kerosene, and gasoline, and the other for "discount-to-crude" petroleum products like fuel oil and naphtha. The first price cap was set at $100 per barrel, while the second was set at $45 per barrel.

Under the deal, EU and G7 countries will ban banks from financing the purchase and sale of Russian oil, insurance companies from insuring shipments, and ports from unloading oil transported by tankers if it is traded at a higher price than that fixed by the European Union.

The European Union's price cap was sharply criticized by Russia. In early February, Moscow imposed a ban on the sale of oil to states and entities that support the price cap imposed on Russian oil. With the exception of situations that require special permission from the president, the ban will be in effect for five months. The move also prohibits purchasing raw materials from Russia, even through intermediary countries or supply chains.