Freight News Articles

Cheap PPE Freight Prices

Whilst demand for PPE has never been greater, especially for gloves and masks imports, there is now more airline space than bookings. Therefore prices have gone down by two thirds since the COVID-19 crisis started, making air freight a cheap option.

Are you enjoying the cheap, reduced rates that are now in the market?

It is still the case that passenger flights are still few and far between. The way that the majority of the world’s air cargo used to moved was in passenger planes.

Importing Masks & Gloves Into The UK

Importing PPE

If you have been trying to get PPE into the UK you may have already discovered the complexities and issues surrounding this process. There is an obvious massive demand for PPE equipment – masks, face shields, gloves, protective equipment etc in the UK at the moment with a lack of supplies.

With social distancing being common place and retail shops and industry starting up again in June, this demand is going to increase.

Shipping Delays From China

Shipping From China

It’s a long way from China to the UK, 7775 km if you were able to go direct. However, most freight making the journey ends up in a container making the 30 / 40 day transit on the back of a container ship.

The routing the vessel takes has massive implications on the time taken to arrive to the UK along with the emissions produced.

The usual route heading through the Gulf of Aden and then using the Suez Canal as a way into the Med cuts out ten days sailing and around 9000 km,

K&L Freight does it’s bit to help supply the UK with PPE

As more or less everyone in the UK knows, a lack of PPE has dominated the news in the UK for weeks now.

There are huge logistical challenges in getting PPE from China to the UK as most regular flights have now been grounded, leaving the few freighter aircraft in use to operate along with a selection of passenger aircraft that are carrying cargo only at the present time.

Importing PPE From China

Considerations When Importing PPE From china

It is becoming clear that there will be an ongoing need for all PPE products through most of this year and maybe beyond.

Whilst there is a big push on UK production of these items, with the vast need caused by the changing of PPE multiple times per day and the run-down of the UK’s manufacturing ability, it’s clearly obvious that there will be an ongoing requirement to import these items for the foreseeable future.

How is Coronavirus Affecting K&L Freight Operations?

We are being asked by many of our customers how the Covid19 Coronavirus is affecting operations at K&L Freight and the wider international transport industry.

We can advise the following:

Sea Freight

Sea freight services are not directly affected by the virus, ships, ports and local transport; for both full load and part load deliveries and collections are operating more or less normally.

Sea freight services with K&L FreightInternational transport is considered by the government a key service and so has government approval to operate,

Supply chain review from importing by air from China

Air Freight From China Challenge

The Challenge was to simplify a customers’ supply chain that had grown without any focus on the planning of how orders are sent from China.

We find this often happens with companies that set up and then have rapidly expanded.

The company’s initial emphasis is quite rightly on sales and growing the business. It’s only when the growth curve settles a little and the business matures do minds turn to procedures and processes needed to make a business more efficient to facilitate the next phase of growth.

Anti-Dumping Duty

What is anti-dumping duty?

First of all a bit of background. If you have ever imported at all from outside of Europe or countries with free trade agreements you will be familiar with the concept of paying duty to Customs and that it is a cost of doing business. You will probably know that most industrial items have a duty rate of between zero to a few percent for most items with other items a bit more.

Incoterms: All You Need To Know

Terms of sale, properly know as ‘Incoterms ‘ are published by the International Chamber of Commerce and are widely recognised in law, worldwide. In this article we answer the question what does ‘incoterm’ mean in shipping?

See more about the different types of incoterm and feel free to get in touch with K&L freight if you have any questions about Incoterms or any shipping and freight queries.

A Guide To Import Tax

If you are importing into the UK you will want to know what tax you are going to be charged by customs.

Firstly it is important to note there are two types of tax which are quite different and are best treated separately. Import duty is a tax that cannot normally be refunded. Import VAT on the other hand is normally refunded some time after import as detailed below.

Import Duty

All goods that are imported into the UK are classified using what is called a commodity code or HS code which is a ten digit number.