After spending some days in Wales and enjoying a great rugby match, today, TheWinsors and The Grandma havetravelled to Belfast, the capital of North Ireland tocelebrate Saint Patrick with the Irish community.
During the trip, the family has studied some English grammar with For/Since,and they have been talking about Irish culture and the concept of luck in different cultures. Finally, they have assisted to a fantastic Irishfolk concert.
Saint Patrick's Day or the Feast of Saint Patrick in
Irish, Lá Fhéile Pádraig, is a cultural and religious celebration held
on 17 March, the traditional death date of Saint Patrick (c. AD
385–461), the foremost patron saint of Ireland.
Saint Patrick's Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early 17th century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion especially the Church of Ireland, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Lutheran Church.
The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in
Ireland, and celebrates the heritage and culture of the Irish in
general. Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals,
cèilidhs, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks. Christians who
belong to liturgical denominations also attend church services and
historically the Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking alcohol were
lifted for the day, which has encouraged and propagated the holiday's
tradition of alcohol consumption.
Saint Patrick's Day is a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland, NorthernIreland, the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, for provincial government employees, and the British Overseas Territory of Montserrat. It is also widely celebrated by the Irish diaspora around the world, especially in Great Britain, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia, and New Zealand. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated in more countries than any other national festival.
Modern celebrations have been greatly influenced by those of the Irish diaspora, particularly those that developed in North America.
In recent years, there has been criticism of Saint Patrick's Day
celebrations for having become too commercialised and for fostering
negative stereotypes of the Irish.
Patrick was a 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland.
Much of what is known about Saint Patrick comes from the Declaration,
which was allegedly written by Patrick himself. It is believed that he
was born in Roman Britain in the fourth century, into a wealthy
Romano-British family. His father was a deacon and his grandfather was a
priest in the Christian church. According to the Declaration, at the
age of sixteen, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders and taken as a slave
to Gaelic Ireland. It says that he spent six years there working as a
shepherd and that during this time he found God. The Declaration
says that God told Patrick to flee to the coast, where a ship would be
waiting to take him home. After making his way home, Patrick went on to
become a priest.
According to tradition, Patrick returned to Ireland to convert the pagan Irish to Christianity. The Declaration says that he spent many years evangelising in the northern half of Ireland and converted thousands. Patrick's efforts against the druids were eventually turned into an allegory in which he drove snakes out of Ireland: Ireland never had any snakes.
Tradition
holds that he died on 17 March and was buried at Downpatrick. Over the
following centuries, many legends grew up around Patrick and he became
Ireland's foremost saint.
Today, The Grandma has been revising her notes taken in her Logistics course in Sant Boi de Llobregat. She has been searching more information about shipping, a complex process that involves lots of information, places, protocols and instructions.
Working in Logistics is a team group. If a piece of the chain breaks, all the chain breaks and it is necessary to find the mistake and start again. It is very important to know who are your partners and whose works they are developing. This is the main reason because of The Grandma has played Who is Who, an amazing game of identification, and has revised her list of vocabulary about jobs.
The Grandma has been thinking about the importance of creating a shipping language, a code that allows the total identification of goods, transports, places, providers and customers. Language is an ancestral way of communication and every community or every economical sector has its own. Logistics has its own code created by acronyms.
The Grandma has read about the importance of learning languages talking about the example of Ramon Llull, the mathematician, polymath, philosopher, logician, Franciscan tertiary and writer from the Kingdom of Majorca. He is credited with writing the first major work of Catalan literature and also considered a pioneer of computation theory. Ramon Llull understood the importance of languages in communication and created his own codes and methods in a system named Ars Combinatoria.
The Grandma has searched more information about interesting languages used along the history like Navajo -Native American Language- and Silbo Gomero(Canary Islands) or codes like the Bell's Code -used by churches, sea transport and railway- and El Barallete a largely vanished argot which used to be employed by the traditional knife-sharpeners and umbrella-repairers (afiadores e paragüeiros) of the Galician province of Ourense.
She has also read about how Occitan poets and Gypsy people used poetryand Tarot cards, respectively, as a method to transfer information in a hidden way.
Freight transport is the physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea but in American English, it has been extended to refer to transport by land or air, in International English: carriage, as well. Logistics, a term borrowed from the military environment, is also used in the same sense.
Ricard is preparing a new shipping
Much freight transport is done by ships. An individual nation's fleet and the people that crew it are referred to as its merchant navy or merchant marine. Merchant shipping is the lifeblood of the world economy, carrying 90% of international trade with 102,194 commercial ships worldwide. On rivers and canals, barges are often used to carry bulk cargo.
Cargo is transported by air in specialized cargo aircraft and in the luggage compartments of passenger aircraft. Air freight is typically the fastest mode for long-distance freight transport, but it is also the most expensive.
Intermodal freight transport refers to shipments that involve more than one mode. More specifically it usually refers to the use of intermodal shipping containers that are easily transferred between ship, rail, plane and truck.
For example, a shipper works together with both ground and air transportation to ship an item overseas. Intermodal freight transport is used to plan the route and carry out the shipping service from the manufacturer to the door of the recipient.
Common trading terms used in shipping goods internationally include:
-Free on Board (FOB)–the exporter delivers the goods at the specified location and on board the vessel. Costs paid by the exporter include load, lash, secure and stow the cargo, including securing cargo not to move in the ships hold, protecting the cargo from contact with the double bottom to prevent slipping, and protection against damage from condensation. For example, FOB JNPT means that the exporter delivers the goods to the Jawahar lal Nehru Port, India, and pays for the cargo to be loaded and secured on the ship. This term also declares where the responsibility of shipper ends and that of buyer starts. The exporter is bound to deliver the goods at his cost and expense. In this case, the freight and other expenses for outbound traffic are borne by the importer.
-Carriage and Freight, now known in the US as Cost and Freight, (C&F, CFR, CNF): Insurance is payable by the importer, and the exporter pays all expenses incurred in transporting the cargo from its place of origin to the port/airport and ocean freight/air freight to the port/airport of destination. For example, C&F Los Angeles, the exporter pays the ocean shipping/air freight costs to Los Angeles. Most of the governments ask their exporters to trade on these terms to promote their exports worldwide such as India and China. Many of the shipping carriers such as UPS, DHL, FedEx offer guarantees on their delivery times. These are known as GSR guarantees or guaranteed service refunds; if the parcels are not delivered on time, the customer is entitled to a refund.
Freight Transportation
-Carriage, Insurance and Freight, now known in the US as cost, insurance and freight (CIF): Insuranceand Freight are all paid by the exporter to the specified location.
For example, at CIF Los Angeles, the exporter pays the ocean shipping/air freight costs to Los Angeles including the insurance of cargo. This also states that responsibility of the shipper ends at the Los Angeles port.
-The term best way generally implies that the shipper will choose the carrier who offers the lowest rate, to the shipper, for the shipment. In some cases, however, other factors, such as better insurance or faster transit time will cause the shipper to choose an option other than the lowest bidder.
-Door-to-door shipping is a service provided by many international shipping companies. The quoted price of this service includes all shipping, handling, import and customs duties, making it a hassle-free option for customers to import goods from one jurisdiction to another. This is compared to standard shipping, the price of which typically includes only the expenses incurred by the shipping company in transferring the object from one place to another. Customs fees, import taxes and other tariffs may contribute substantially to this base price before the item ever arrives.
Freight is usually organized into various shipment categories before it is transported. An item's category is determined by:
-The type of item being carried. For example, a kettle could fit into the category 'household goods'.
-How large the shipment is, in terms of both item size and quantity.
-How long the item for delivery will be in transit.
Shipments are typically categorized as household goods, express, parcel, and freight shipments:
-Household Goods (HHG) include furniture, art and similar items.
-Express: Very small business or personal items like envelopes are considered overnight express or express letter shipments. These shipments are rarely over a few kilograms or pounds and almost always travel in the carrier's own packaging. Express shipments almost always travel some distance by air. An envelope may go coast to coast in the United States overnight or it may take several days, depending on the service options and prices chosen by the shipper.
-Parcel: Larger items like small boxes are considered parcels or ground shipments. These shipments are rarely over 50 kg, with no single piece of the shipment weighing more than about 70 kg. Parcel shipments are always boxed, sometimes in the shipper's packaging and sometimes in carrier-provided packaging. Service levels are again variable but most ground shipments will move about 800 to 1,100 km per day. Depending on the origin of the package, it can travel from coast to coast in the United States in about four days. Parcel shipments rarely travel by air and typically move via road and rail. Parcels represent the majority of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) shipments.
-Freight: Beyond HHG, express, and parcel shipments, movements are termed freight shipments.
The international shipping industry can be divided into four closely related shipping markets, each trading in a different commodity: the freight market, the sale and purchase market, the newbuilding market and the demolition market.
These four markets are linked by cash flow and push the market traders in the direction they want.
Freight Transportation
The freight market consists of shipowners, charterers and brokers. They use four types of contractual arrangements: the voyage charter, the contract of affreightment, the time charter and the bareboat charter.
Shipowners contract to carry cargo for an agreed price per tonne while the charter market hires out ships for a certain period. A charter is legally agreed upon in a charter-party in which the terms of the deal are clearly set out.
Freight derivatives, which includes Forward Freight Agreements (FFA), container freight swap agreements, container freight derivatives, physical-deliverable freight derivatives, and options based on these, are financial instruments for trading in future levels of freight rates, for dry bulk carriers, tankers and containerships.
These instruments are settled against various freight rate indices published by the Baltic Exchange (for Dry and most Wet contracts), Shanghai Shipping Exchange (International and domestic Dry Bulk, and International Containers), and Platt's (Asian Wet contracts), or physical delivered through Shanghai Shipping Freight Exchange.
FFAs are often traded over-the-counter, through broker members of the Forward Freight Agreement Brokers Association (FFABA), such as Arrow Futures, Clarkson's Securities, Marex Spectron, SSY -Simpson Spence Young, Braemar Seascope LTD, Freight Investor Services, BGC Partners, GFI Group, ACM Shipping Ltd, BRS, Tradition-Platou and ICAP. However, screen-based trading is becoming more popular, through various screens.
Trades can be given up for clearing by the broker to one of the clearing houses that support such trades, or be executed in integrated electronic exchange. There are five clearing houses for freight: NOS Clearing/NASDAQ OMX, EEX, CME Clearport, ICE Futures Europe and SGX, and one electronic exchange: Shanghai Shipping Freight Exchange.
Freight derivatives are primarily used by shipowners and operators, oil companies, trading companies, and grain houses as tools for managing freight rate risk. Recently, with commodities standing at the forefront of international economics, the large financial trading houses, including banks and hedge funds, have entered the market.
Baltic Dry Index measures the cost for shipping goods such as iron ore and
grains. The trading volume of dry freight derivatives, a market
estimated to be worth about $200 billion in 2007, grew as those needing
ships attempted to contain their risks and investment banks and hedge
funds looked to make profits from speculating on price movements. At the
close of the 2007 financial year, the number of traded lots on dry FFAs
doubled the derived physical product.
Freight Transportation
Shanghai Shipping Freight Exchange is the first electronic shipping freight exchange in the world. It has three lines of businesses, including International Dry Bulk, Domestic Coastal Coal, and International Container.
The container freight derivatives were launched in 2011 and shortly became the most liquid container freight contracts. Based on the success and experience from container freight contracts, SSEFC launched coastal coal contracts in 2012. In 2014, in order to better achieve the risk shifting effect of shipping freight derivatives, SSEFC innovated and launched the world's first physical-deliverable shipping capacity contract.
In the sale and purchase market, second-hand ships are traded between shipowners. The administrative procedures used are roughly the same as in the real-estate business, using a standard contract. Trading ships is an important source of revenue for shipowners, as the prices are very volatile. The second hand value of ships depends on freight rates, age, inflation and expectations.
The newbuilding market deals with transactions between shipowners and shipbuilders. Contract negotiation can be very complex and extend beyond price. They also cover ship specifications, delivery date, stage payments and finance. The prices on the newbuilding market are very volatile and sometimes follow the prices on the sale and purchase market.
On the demolition market, ships are sold for scrap. The transactions happen between shipowners and demolition merchants, often with speculators acting as intermediaries.
A Full Container Load (FCL) is an ISO standard container that is loaded and unloaded under the risk and account of one shipper and only one consignee.
In practice, it means that the whole container is intended for one consignee. FCL container shipment tends to have lower freight rates than an equivalent weight of cargo in bulk. FCL is intended to designate a container loaded to its allowable maximum weight or volume, but FCL in practice on ocean freight does not always mean a full payload or capacity -many companies will prefer to keep a 'mostly' full container as a single container load to simplify logistics and increase security compared to sharing a container with other goods.
Less-than-Container Load (LCL) is a shipment that is not large enough to fill a standard cargo container. The abbreviation LCL formerly applied to less than (railway) car load for quantities of material from different shippers or for delivery to different destinations carried in a single railway car for efficiency. LCL freight was often sorted and redistributed into different railway cars at intermediate railway terminals en route to the final destination.
LCL is a quantity of cargo less than that required for the application of a carload rate. A quantity of cargo less than that which fills the visible or rated capacity of an inter-modal container. It can also be defined as a consignment of cargo which is inefficient to fill a shipping container. It is grouped with other consignments for the same destination in a container at a container freight station.
After reading all this information about shipping goods, markets and instructions, The Grandma has explained For/Since prepositions and Imperative, the best tense to give instructions.
Today, The Grandma has continued her Logistic course in Sant Boi. They have been talking about modes of transports and handling equipment. Transport is essential in Logistics. If you want to send something to somewhere you need a good transport and a quick and cheap route.
Since the beginning of the humanity, people have created routes to exchange products, to create commerce, to enjoy tourism or to escape from wars, prosecutions or natural disasters. These last routes are also known as the routes of exile.
These historical routes are the same routes that nowadays are used for commercial reasons and where we used GPS today, ancient cultures used maps -The Game of the Goose- or travelled following the stars.
China is working in a new silk route that, probably, will change the future of transport, commerce and communications.
The Silk Road was a network of trade routes which connected the East and West, and was central to the economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between these regions from the 2nd century BCE to the 18th century. The Silk Road primarily refers to the land routes connecting East Asia and Southeast Asia with South Asia, Persia, the Arabian Peninsula, East Africa and Southern Europe.
The Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative trade in silk carried out along its length, beginning in the Han dynasty in China (207 BCE–220 CE). The Han dynasty expanded the Central Asian section of the trade routes around 114 BCE through the missions and explorations of the Chinese imperial envoy Zhang Qian, as well as several military conquests. The Chinese took great interest in the security of their trade products, and extended the Great Wall of China to ensure the protection of the trade route.
The Silk Road trade played a significant role in the development of the civilizations of China, Korea, Japan, the Indian subcontinent, Iran, Europe, the Horn of Africa and Arabia, opening long-distance political and economic relations between the civilizations.
Though silk was the major trade item exported from China, many other goods and ideas were exchanged, including religions (especially Buddhism), syncretic philosophies, sciences, and technologies like paper and gunpowder. So in addition to economic trade, the Silk Road was a route for cultural trade among the civilizations along its network. Diseases, most notably plague, also spread along the Silk Road.
In June 2014, UNESCO designated the Chang'an-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road as a World Heritage Site. The Indian portion is on the tentative site list.
The mode of transportation is an important consideration when planning the shipment process. Besides the costs, the urgency of the shipment, the value of the goods being shipped as well as the size and weight of the goods need to be evaluated when determining the form of transportation. In this article, we want to help you determine, which mode is best to transport your cargo and freight!
OCEAN
Seaborne trade accounts for about 90% of the global trade, and as per UNCTAD, 1687 million tons (2015 estimate) were carried in around 177.6 million containers (2015 estimate) covering 998 billion ton-miles (2016 estimate).
Because of size or volume, there are several types of cargoes that cannot be or is economically unviable to move by other modes of transport than the sea.
Ocean freight
Ocean freight is a less expensive method of shipping goods, but the drawback is a longer transit time. Another benefit for ocean freight is while size and weight may be an issue for air; it is not for ocean freight.
Ocean freight is used quite extensively for the movement of bulk commodities such as agri-products (wheat, maize, soya, etc.), coal, iron ore or for wet bulk products such as crude oil and petroleum. Also, larger, odd-shaped items including engines and propellers may move via this mode as well, depending on how sensitive the delivery time is.
Ocean freight is also a preferred mode of transport for the movement of high volume and heavy cargo such as minerals, metals, ores, steel coils, etc. which would be impossible to move by air freight.
Additionally, businesses are placing more of an emphasis on the environmental impact on shipping. An air freight service emits a higher amount of polluting gases with less space capacity compared to sea freight services which are considered a much greener transportation mode with a higher carrying capacity.
Key benefits of ocean freight include:
-Suitable for wide range of products with long lead times
-Large volumes. A single, ultra-large container ship can carry +/-20,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU)
-Most environmental friendly among all modes of transport
-Economical. Liner shipping is the most efficient mode of transport for goods
Over the next 15 years, as the world GDP grows, there will be a demand for higher value goods. As per Boeing's 2016-2017 world air cargo forecast, there will be a proportionate growth in the value per ton of total traded goods around the world.
To meet the demand for growth, world air cargo traffic is forecasted to grow an average 4.2 percent per year.
Air freight
Air freight
is a critical mode of transport. It serves markets and supply chains
that demand speed.
One of greatest examples goes back to 1997 when Apple
began innovating on the nitty-gritty details of supply-chain
management. Almost immediately upon Steve Jobs’ return. At the time,
most computer manufacturers transported products by sea, a far cheaper
option than air freight. Steve Jobs took advantage of the benefit of air freight and used an innovative strategy. He paid $50 million to buy up all the available holiday air freight space to ensure that the company’s new, translucent blue iMacs would be widely available during Christmas season giving them a massive competitive advantage over their rivals. -It was an Oh s- moment, recalls former HP supply chain chief Mike Fawkes.
Other industries such as the automotive and retail industry also utilize air freight to achieve just-in-time (JIT) inventory replenishment. JIT option allows stores, production lines to place order fulfillment based on demand as, and when required. It provides greater flexibility and reduces inventory and storage costs.
Also, perishable goods such as foods, flowers, and some pharmaceuticals also take advantage of shorter transit time. Another positive for air freight is that there's less handling of cargo overall, so the likelihood of damage or theft is less likely when utilizing air.
But air freight also has its own disadvantages such as being one of the most expensive due to the requirement of speed and the fuel that is used.
It also has its size and weight limitations. Regulatory bodies limit what can and cannot be transported by air, and as such, oddly shaped or very large items may be more suitable for other modes of transport.
Another mode of transport which is also considered a green option is rail. Trains burn less fuel per ton-mile than road vehicles and a train, which can have as many than 100 wagons, only needs one driver. There are, however, some additional costs which are incurred in a rail journey: at each end of the rail transit, a road delivery will be needed, and there will be a lift cost to transfer the container between the train and the road vehicle.
On average, longer journeys tend to be less expensive by rail, and shorter journeys are less costly by road. Where the point of cost neutrality comes is governed by many factors which are route and commodity specific, but in general, the point of cost neutrality can be expected to lie in the range of 130 to 150 miles.
Rail freight
In 2015, the first freight train carrying ISO freight containers from China arrived in the Port of Rotterdam in 18 days as against the normal 44 odd days by the sea.
This movement of containerized cargo by rail from China to logistics hubs in Europe such as in the Netherlands, UK is seen as a significant step in the development of trade between the two continents. It has encouraged multinationals such as Hewlett-Packard and Ricoh to use the route from Europe to China for their cargoes.
The Manager of European Transport at Ricoh notes that if one can set up an effective planning, rail is a relatively quick mode of transport taking only 20 days to China. In addition, the move by rail also has some advantages such as all containers being transported to the location in one go, while being environmentally friendly as a train releases far less CO2 than a plane.
Key benefits of rail freight include:
-Reliable transit times and schedules
-Railroads are the most efficient form of land transportation. One train can haul the equivalent of over 400 trucks
-Fast and cost-effective deliveries over long distances. Typically over 500 miles
-Traditionally, rail has a strong safety record
-Helps in alleviating road congestion, thus lowering emissions
Road freight is one of the most common of all modes of transportation. It is widely used in continents such as Europe, Africa, and North America. The single customs document process provides a seamless movement of goods even across various states and countries.
Road freight provides several advantages over other modes of transportation such as:
-Cost-effectiveness
-Quick and scheduled delivery
-Local, over border, long or short haul deliveries even in rural areas
-Flexible service
-Saving in Packing Cost compared to other modes
-Track and trace of cargo and truck
-Complete door-to-door service and it is one of the more economical means of transport.
However, truck transport is limited somewhat as to what it can carry by the size of the vehicles used and by size and weight restrictions. Another limitation is that it is affected by weather, road conditions and traffic.
Another option to keep in mind is multimodal solutions -the utilization of more than one mode of transport.
Multimodal is a combination of different modes of transportation such as rail, road, and sea which allows the customer to cost-effectively manage shipments from start-to-end, ensuring optimum care and efficiency every step of the way.
Multimodal
One such example is the cross region rail network combined with truck.
Providers including DHL, Geodis, UPS and DB Schenker are offering such a solution along China’s Silk Road network.
According to UPS, the service can offer savings of up to 65% versus air freight costs while providing transit times up to 40% faster than standard ocean movements.
Sea-Air is another example of multimodal transport. The service is considered less expensive than air and quicker than ocean service.
An alternate solution to pure air or ocean, Sea-Air provides the global transportation industry time and cost savings along with eco-friendliness.
Sometimes using this mode of transport helps to avoid demurrage fees.
Key benefits of multimodal transport include:
-Cargo can be moved to any part of the world using multiple modes of transport
-Reduces the distance for the goods between the manufacturer and consumer
-Customers can deal with one entity to handle all modes of transport under one document
Conclusion. What mode of transportation should you use?
There are numerous options for transporting goods, and there may not be one solution for your transportation needs. Each mode of transport has its advantages and disadvantages. Prioritizing your needs, understanding your shipment and comparing costs is important when planning your shipment and choosing the best mode of transport.
When you have chosen your best transport, it is time to talk about which type of goods you want to send and which containertype you are going to use. An intermodal container is a large standardized shipping container, designed and built for intermodal freight transport, meaning these containers can be used across different modes of transport -from ship to rail to truck- without unloading and reloading their cargo. Intermodal containers are primarily used to store and transport materials and products efficiently and securely in the global containerized intermodal freight transport system, but smaller numbers are in regional use as well.
These containers are known under a number of names, such as simply container, cargo or freight container, ISO container, shipping, sea or ocean container, sea van or (Conex) box, sea can or c can. Intermodal containers exist in many types and a number of standardized sizes, but ninety percent of the global container fleet are so-called dry freight or general purpose containers, durable closed steel boxes, mostly of either 6.1 or 12.2 m standard length. The common heights are 2.6 m and 2.9 m -the latter are known as High Cube or Hi-Cube containers.
Just like cardboard boxes and pallets, these containers are a means to bundle cargo and goods into larger, unitized loads, that can be easily handled, moved, and stacked, and that will pack tightly in a ship or yard.
Intermodal containers share a number of key construction features to withstand the stresses of intermodal shipping, to facilitate their handling and to allow stacking, as well as being identifiable through their individual, unique ISO 6346 reporting mark. In 2012, there were about 20.5 million intermodal containers in the world of varying types to suit different cargoes. Containers have largely supplanted the traditional break bulk cargo -in 2010 containers accounted for 60% of the world's seaborne trade. The predominant alternative methods of transport carry bulk cargo -whether gaseous, liquid or solid- e.g. by bulk carrier or tank ship, tank car or truck. For air freight, the lighter weight IATA-defined unit load device is used.
Finally, The Grandma has explained how to make comparisons and how to avaluate which is the best transport or container using comparative and superlative adjectives.
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