Link of DSLV (the German Association for Transport and Logistics)

Interested? Please contact the head of the logistics center, Mr. Peter Huber, T +41 61 337 86 50 (extension), email hub@lamprecht.ch, who will be happy to advise you.

Lamprecht Transport Ltd. is very concerned about the geographical extension of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, especially about the rising number of cases in Europe and in our home country. Our thoughts are with all affected worldwide!

Lamprecht Transport is following the World Health Organization’s (WHO) strategy of disease containment. So far, the WHO has not imposed restrictions on the movement of goods across borders and international trade. However, local authorities may impose restrictions for specific areas showing clusters of infections. Of course, we are following such measures strictly.

The health and the safety of our employees has highest priority for us. In this respect, we are adopting the WHO guidelines for all our staff.

We are ordering 14 days self-quarantine for employees returning from specific affected regions. We also prescribe following proper precautions and recommend contacting the local medical services for all employees showing symptoms like fever, cough or difficulty in breathing. Besides those measures we instructed our employees to:

Wash hands frequently with soap and water and use alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Avoid touching mouth or eyes to limit the risk of infection spread.

Cover their mouth and nose with a tissue, or a sleeve or flexed elbow when coughing or sneezing, throw the used tissue into a closed bin immediately after use; wash hands/skin well afterwards.

Limit physical contact with colleagues and visitors in the workplace: reduce the frequency of face-to-face contact and avoid direct contact, e.g. hand shake. Instead of shaking hands we recommend to welcome visitors with a smile.

We have available hand disinfectants in all our offices and encourage our staff to follow the above WHO recommendations. In order to be effective in this respect, we encourage all our partners to also follow the same guidelines.

We are monitoring the situation very closely and are prepared to adapt further measures if necessary.

The situation does not seem to be calming down. Yet, the effects on world trade and thus logically on the forwarding and logistics industry have intensified:

Labor and infrastructure situation

Labor is only slowly coming back to work but only limited number of employees physically go to office. There is limited connectivity.

Offices in China have restrictions such as health check at entry/exit, no use of public infrastructure such as toilets, shopping for food and drinks. Airconditioning has been switched off.

Truck-drivers are missing. Only approx 30% of the truck dirvers are working.

The infrastructure in most ports  (such as Shanghai) are closed for cargo coming from Mainland China. They accept it, but are putting it into a 14 days quarantine.

Most airlines have already extended their suspension of flights from/to China. As an example, British Airlines is not flying until end of April 2020, Lufthansa and Swiss until end of March 2020.

China outbound business

Production is almost at zero and if cargo has been produced it cannot go out.

Inland transportation to the ports very limited.

Ports have tough security measures in place that will cause delays.

China inbound business

Imports to China to non-critical areas can happen but with massive delays.

No transportation into critical areas, also because drivers will not go there.

Equipment and capacity situation

Worrying shortage of equipment expected in Europe. While Reefers are already sold out, we expect similar situation for Dry Containers very soon.

Carriers are managing their capacity with numerous blank sailings affecting both directions.

Shipping lines advice on some emerging quarantine requirements imposed by regulatory bodies for vessels which have visited or are from China.

For CIF (cost insurance freight) and CIP (carriage insurance paid) the rules of Incoterms® 2020 provide for an adjustment of the necessary insurance coverage.

FCA, DAP, DPU and DDP take into account that the transport can also be handled by one's own means of transport.

DAT (delivered at terminal) was renamed into DPU (delivered at place unloaded).

Please find here an overview of the Incoterms® 2020 for download 

To comply with the Regulation, sulphur in fuel oil must be reduced from 3.50% to 0.50%.

The new IMO 2020 Low Sulphur Regulation impacts the global shipping industry and shipping costs are set to increase worldwide, as the cost of the Very Low Sulphur Fuel Oil (VLSFO) is expected to be significantly higher than the present High Sulphur Fuel Oil (HSFO).

Please be informed that a new charge – Low Sulphur Surcharge (LSS) will be applied on top of carriers’ ocean freight charges, effective 1 December 2019.

For further details, please contact our ocean freight departments.