ADAPTING TO THE POST-PANDEMIC WORLD Questions around the long-term outlook and resilience of the airfreight supply chain remain While ‘workarounds’ have allowed goods to continue to flow, they might not be suited to all commodities, and come with drawbacks including increased supply chain costs and transportation time. Questions around the long-term outlook and resilience of the supply chain remain and will persist should uncertainty around the normalisation of supply chains continue. Figure 10 describes some of the ways in which supply chain users have adapted to the pandemic challenges, their short to medium-term impact and the long-term questions they raise. These are based on consultations with airfreight operators and users. Figure 10: Supply chain workaround and long-term questions Workaround Accessing the modified airfreight supply chain
Seeking alternatives to airfreight
Short/medium-term impact
Long-term questions
Trucking goods to Sydney and Melbourne
• Increased supply chain costs • Freight availability and reliability challenges
• Are the increased supply chain costs sustainable? • Is there sufficient road infrastructure to support this movement in an efficient manner? • Is there sufficient airside infrastructure to support a higher concentration of freight volumes at our major airports? • Will Sydney continue to be home to the lion’s share of freight capacity, in particular dedicated freighter capacity, given it is the base for high value imports warehousing?
Greater use of dedicated freighters
• Increased supply chain costs
• What needs to change for dedicated freighter operations to better suit perishable exports given their preference to be transported in smaller volumes but at more regular intervals? • What are the infrastructure implications of an increased mix of dedicated freighters compared to belly capacity? • Are these services, which are largely concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne, accessible by all supply chain users? • Is there sufficient airside infrastructure to process transhipments from other Australian airports?
Crop varieties that can survive sea freight
• Product line changeover costs • R&D costs • Customer acceptance
• How will increased adoption of sea freight impact airfreight supply chains?
Packaging technologies allowing for sea freight
• Increased costs • Inconvenience of adjusting to sea freight supply chain
• How will increased adoption of sea freight impact airfreight supply chains? • How much outbound airfreight capacity would be freed up if these technologies became widely adopted?
For some lower value commodities, including horticultural goods such as carrots and onions, the rise in prices through COVID has made export by airfreight unviable. If pre-COVID prices do not return – which appears likely – this may have widespread impacts for domestic producers and local horticultural markets.
16
International Airfreight Indicator 2021
