Everyone loves a good bank holiday; those lovely three-day weekends that creep up on you over the course of the year. However, for the European Groupage industry, bank holidays can cause a certain amount of head-scratching, and a serious amount of forward planning – particularly when the one day turns into two, as in the [...]
Frosty festivities may lead to a blue New Year
Matthew Marriott, Commercial Director of Hellmann Worldwide Logistics UK, shares his thoughts on the not so jolly Christmas trading verses the positive direction UK exports are taking, as he suspects more retailers will disappear from the high street after the January sales.
- This week retail guru Mary Portas delivered her government commissioned report into the health of the high street
- Of course, high street retail does not operate in isolation, and is intimately linked with a number of other industries – not least the health of logistics services that ship in goods from across the globe.
- However, while this relationship helps drive both industries forward in times of prosperity, it can also prove to be a hindrance in more financially unstable times, as poor sales translate into a drop in both import and manufacturing demand
- For example, despite 2011 proving to be a desperate year in terms of retail imports for the Christmas period, UK exports have been buoyant, meaning that the UK trade deficit has been seriously reduced
- None of which bodes well in terms of UK retail, but for logistics providers the thriving export market has provided an impetus sorely lacking in the imports sector…
Quotations:
Matthew Marriott, Commercial Director of Hellmann UK, said:
Following a poor July and August of pre-Christmas orders, Hellmann, and no doubt our competitors, expected a rush on air and sea freight as recession-hit shops that had under-ordered in the summer struggled to keep up with the Christmas demand. Instead there was no rush, sending a clear and worrying signal that consumer demand was in decline – even at the most profitable time of the year. Whereas prices in August commonly increase by up to 50%, this year they fell by 20-30%, belying the dismal confidence of European retailers. The position of logistics as centrally interconnected to the mechanics of this cycle means that the industry is well placed to assess the status of the economy. Indeed, many experts regard logistics as an effective economic barometer.