Good Morning,

Wow what a strange new world we are experiencing, big Banks collapsing , purchasing power of our hard-earned dollars diminishing at a level never seen before etc etc yet freight rates on imports have fallen something like 10X….. the only problem is that buyers are being cautious (as indeed we need to be) so cargo volumes have slowed, both Import and Export.

What is next you may ask, we’ve just been through 2 years with an operational environment that smashed our teams and now it seems that we’ve switched to survival mode.

We are lucky being “down under” as we are a little removed from the cut and thrust of American politics and economic woes, but you only have to look back 15 years to the GFC era to realize that the last time “America sneezed, Australia and New Zealand got Pneumonia”……

As the only pure wholesaler in this market, we’re a really good “thermometer” in judging what’s going on, as our clients (the Forwarders) cover all sections of the entire Aussie commercial market and what we are being told, and indeed seeing, isn’t making the next 6/12 months look that great at all…..

So, what can we do to work with the Forwarders and help you to secure every shipment you are asked to quote on ?

Firstly, Leigh Moss our National Imports Manager has revamped our National Import Tariff to include all the surcharges and has pushed our overseas network to lower our inwards costs. These reductions are now reflected on our highly competitive March Import Tariff.

You can’t be good at everything, so we are NOT focussed on the China market….and whilst we handle China cargo there are several specific China operators who seem to be doing a damn good job….this allows us to focus on emerging trades and areas where the Mac-nels Containerline Group have offices and weekly consols into their 40 plus year old hub and spoke network.

On the Export side, Kelly Abell, our National Export Manager, and her team, have and are continuing to aggressively push carriers to provide accurate sailing dates and to reduce export freight cost for our Consol cargo, to offset the raft of increases in landside costs, infrastructure fees and depot charges.

These too are represented in the new Export LCL tariff which will be released before the 1^st April…and it won’t be an April Fool’s Joke either, so keep your eyes open for this!

Meanwhile if you need something specific for a quote I welcome you to speak to Carina Gonzalez (our National sales Manager), Kelly, Leigh or myself, and we will do our best to assist you to secure whatever business you are chasing.

Wishing you my best for a great week ahead.

Lance Evans

I am a very very happy fellow this morning as I have terrific news to announce….
Today marks the start of a new Era for Mac-nels Evans International Freight Consolidators, as I take immense pleasure in announcing the appointment of a National Sales Manager to our Management Group.

Please join me in Welcoming Carina Gonzalez to our team.

Carina will be based in Sydney but will be travelling extensively, meeting and serving the needs of the Freight Forwarders of Australia.
She comes to us with 17 years’ experience in the Consolidation Industry here in Australia and will be known to a large number of you already.
Her and I will work together in all matters pertaining to Customer Retention, Business Growth, Service Delivery and Reach in the Australian Market;
I have always worked on the principle of having people that are smarter than me by my side and those that know her will agree that Carina is a prime example of this.

Carina joins Kelly Abell (National Export Manager), Leigh Moss (National Imports Manager), Neil Parmeshwar (Finance Manager) and myself as the Management team of MNCL/EIFC.
Carina may be contacted for any Export or Import rate request or tradelane enquiry you may have.

Her contact details are as below;
Mobile (unchanged) ; 0430 026 963
Email ; carina@eifc.com.au
Or by phoning any of our office numbers

Good Morning Everyone,

Trust you have survived the week thus far and are looking forward to a great weekend with Family and friends.

One of the requests I received to make comment on was ” why is their such a shortage of space and so hard to get a booking etc.”

There are actually quite a few parts to the answer to this but I wanted to dismiss one of the common misconceptions I’ve heard for a while now.

We are not in an overly growing market place, trade is not that much bigger than before the Covid nightmare, what we have is a reduction in actual capacity……

This isn’t because there are less scheduled vessels but because there are actually less slots available due to vessel late arrivals , port omissions to regain schedule placement/order.

Most shipping lines offer a weekly service to and from our 5 main ports.

The issue is that every time a ship is delayed by a week it takes around 2000 TEU away from the number of slots they can ship in a year, a lot of the services are down to 44 sailings from 52…just do the maths…..

Then add the demand against the actual supply capacity and it’s a no brainer that the highest paying cargo gets first dips on the next booking availability.

Then multiply this by the number of ports these vessels call at on a direct basis all around the world and you can see how this is not a fixable problem even in the medium term.

We could talk about bigger newly built vessels coming on stream from next year freeing up the smaller vessels that could then be moved into the Australian trade and replace the existing even smaller vessels, the cost of Chartering, the imbalance of containers and Australia’s heavy 20ft export vs light (40ft) import but how many hours have you got to listen to me spread the seemingly bad news.

There is only one thing we can all do and that’s maximise our mutual resources and work together as an industry to find innovative solutions where we can all take a benefit.

That’s why we have put so much resource into our Wholesale FCL program, its bloody demanding on us but there is strong demand so we have leveraged our resources and created something unique.

I hope these few thoughts have been of some value to you and as always I welcome feedback and suggestions on what to comment on in the future

My very best

Good Morning all,

Industry wide Warning to all Freight Forwarders;

Today I wanted to share with you an incredibly alarming experience we have endured with trying to ship on Maersk line/Hamburg Sud using Maersk Spot.

A preamble for those not aware; late last year the respected Carrier Hamburg Sud　 (now owned by Maersk) made several Forwarder customers aware that the contracts they had were not going to be renewed and that only the actual BCO’s would be offered rate contracts; meaning if a Forwarder wants to get a booking they had to go on to the Maersk website and do a “spot” booking/rate request on an individual shipment basis.

I vowed and declared publicly that we would put HS and Maersk on our DO NOT USE EVER list as it was, in my opinion, a full frontal attack on our industry.

We were then approached by our Carrier rep with whom we have had a long and close relationship and they literally begged us to give them a try.

I respect relationships as one of my pillars of business and so relented and gave the go ahead for my team to explore this.

We did an intensive training session with their Mearsk Spot program leaders ; all good so far….

We made a booking on the 7th Feb 2022 from Melbourne to Lyttleton for 1 x 40ft on the Vessel Safmarine Bayete V209N ETD 05.03.2022

We received a rate that was comparable to ANL of about usd2000 (all up) booked about 5 weeks out

Two weeks later on the 22nd Feb we requested an amendment to the destination (from Lyttleton to Auckland) as requested by our customer, and expected the usd400 amendment fee as we had been instructed in our training .

Guess what happened ????

We received an invoice for close to Ten Thousand US$ for this 40ft.

It appears that they can change the pricing !!!!

I have shielded our Forwarder Customer to this ludicrous price increase and charged them what we had quoted and I have paid the Maersk invoice even though I am about 10k AUD out of pocket.

In the background we have tried appealing to their management but to no avail. ………….

I feel so strongly about this I have stuck my neck out to let you know about our experience.

My best

Lance Evans

Good morning everyone,

Following on from my comments re Maersk Spot last week, I thought I would let you know that I had 149 emails from Forwarders in direct response to its content.

I was actually staggered by the anecdotal evidence pertaining to others experiences and the 100% positive feedback I was given.

Some said I had big cohunes’ , others said it was about time someone called out shipping lines/carriers blatant profiteering during the past 2 years and the seeming new trend to try and push the Freight Forwarders out.

All I would say is that the day they can provide a better service to direct customers than the Aussie and Kiwi Forwarders do, ill eat my damned hat……

One asked why I would stick my neck out so far and I thought id comment on that; I’ve been around in this Industry for a bloody life time (well nearly) I am married to it, in New Zealand I was one of the Industry founders.

I am passionate about it and that’s why I’m prepared to stick that neck out and call s..t out. I’m not worried about being cancelled because I really don’t give a damn what a few knockers may think.

So what else would you like me to share comment about ?

Let me know and ill do my research and use my platform to alert the industry Nationwide.

Now on to the new April National LCL Export Tariff, its done and is ready to be downloaded from the below link;

https://www.eifc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/EIFC-NATIONAL-EXPORT-LCL-TARIFF-1st-April-2022.xlsx

wishing you a fantastic day ahead

Lance Evans and the bloody fantastic Mac-nels Evans Export Seafreight team

Industry wide Warning to all Freight Forwarders;

Today I wanted to share with you an incredibly alarming experience we have endured with trying to ship on Maersk line/Hamburg Sud using Maersk Spot.

A preamble for those not aware; late last year the respected Carrier Hamburg Sud (now owned by Maersk) made several Forwarder customers aware that the contracts they had were not going to be renewed and that only the actual BCO’s would be offered rate contracts; meaning if a Forwarder wants to get a booking they had to go on to the Maersk website and do a “spot” booking/rate request on an individual shipment basis.

I vowed and declared publicly that we would put HS and Maersk on our DO NOT USE EVER list as it was, in my opinion, a full frontal attack on our industry.

We were then approached by our Carrier rep with whom we have had a long and close relationship and they literally begged us to give them a try.

I respect relationships as one of my pillars of business and so relented and gave the go ahead for my team to explore this.

We did an intensive training session with their Maersk Spot program leaders ; all good so far….

We made a booking on the 7^th Feb 2022 from Melbourne to Lyttleton for 1 x 40ft on the Vessel Safmarine Bayete V209N ETD 05.03.2022

We received a rate that was comparable to ANL of about usd2000 (all up) booked about 5 weeks out

Two weeks later on the 22^nd Feb we requested an amendment to the destination (from Lyttleton to Auckland) as requested by our customer, and expected the usd400 amendment fee as we had been instructed in our training .

Guess what happened ????

We received an invoice for close to Ten Thousand US$ for this 40ft.

It appears that they can change the pricing !!!!

I have shielded our Forwarder Customer to this ludicrous price increase and charged them what we had quoted and I have paid the Maersk invoice even though I am about 10k AUD out of pocket.

In the background we have tried appealing to their management but to no avail. …………..( I am happy to share with you their written response should you be interested )

So today my message is (and I implore you on this), do not risk using Maersk Spot, in my opinion it will one day bite you in the bit that hurts…your wallet

I feel so strongly about this I have stuck my neck out to give you this warning, I hope it saves you the same very expensive fate

My best

Lance Evans

CEO

Mac-nels Evans International Freight Consolidators

As most will know we are handling Import Consolidations from quite a number of origins in South East Asia and North Asia with Transhipment connections from all main ports into ALL ports in Australia through Mac-nels Container Line.

Our latest tariff is now available to down load from the below link

https://www.eifc.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/EIFC-NATIONAL-IMPORT-LCL-TARIFF-1st-July-2019.xlsx

call our customer service team to get the download link for our latest and greatest FCL rates, all benchmarked with at least 5 carriers so they are totally market competitive for you to quote your customers immediately.

nb the tariff includes our famously competitive New Zealand FCL rates as well.

We won……or almost won…
EIFC were announced as runner ups in the Australian Freight Forwarder of Year Award 2016.
Not only are we not a normal Freight Forwarder rather a Forwarders Forwarder, but we are an Export only operator only accepting bookings from fellow Freight Forwarders.
Thankyou to the Australian Freight market for accepting us as one of your own special service providers

a new service to the Pacific ports of Apia, Pago Pago and Nukualofa. 

This will be very cost and transit time competitive.

Cargo will be shipped in our Consol boxes from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane each week and transfered in the same Auckland CFS to the export Consol to these points.

As with all our services, bookings are only accepted from Forwarders and Brokers.
Rates will formally appear in our 4th Quarter Tariff update  (for end September release)

Ex Sydney Melb and Brisbane to;
Apia                A$239/m3 or 1000kg
Pago Pago       A$279/m3 or 1000kg
Nukualofa        A$235/m3 or 1000kg
plus a Doc fee of A$15/shipment and the Solas Fee A$20/shipment

Destination office is a member of the Matson Lines USA Group as below;
MOLIDA SHIPPING AGENCY LTD
MATAUTU-TAI WHARF COMPOUND
APIA
SAMOA
Phone – 00685-21509
Contact Person – JR Masuisui Pereira – Director
Mobile – 00685-752-6141
Email – jr@molidashippingagency.com

Schedules are available by calling one of our Senior Trade Supervisors on the below numbers;

SYD: 02 9099 0477 Letitia Wilson
MEL: 03 8644 7388 Emma Buckby
BNE: 07 3040 3591 Tiffany Gamble