Champagne and caviar?

Today, Friday the 30^th of December, is the last working day of 2016. Rather than analyzing some recent happening in air freight and express industry, I would like to use today’s post to thank you for your support of Cargo Facts, and to wish you all a terrific year in 2017.

And, on the subject of the coming year, it has been a long time (in our industry at least) since anyone has been able to say “I wish you a successful year ahead” with a straight face. The last fifteen years have been… well, “challenging” may be the best way to put it. Demand has been more down than up, yields went into the toilet, fuel prices skyrocketed, and world trade has been hit by terrorism, war, disease, and a massive economic recession.

But 2016, while hardly the best year in the history of air freight, saw gradually increasing growth in demand, and, one hopes, has set the stage for a good year ahead.

Will it be all caviar and Champagne? Of course not. In addition to the problems we have faced in the last fifteen years we now face a new threat – or perhaps the return of an old one – in the form of increasing protectionism. But at least we are starting from a solid base, and with hard work (and the usual bit of luck) 2017 has a chance of being a great year – which you can get off to a good start by returning to CargoFacts.com on Tuesday to read about the latest developments in Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s vision of the establishment of an “Electronic World Trade Platform” (eWTP). Mr. Ma believes the eWTP could leverage the Internet to knock down trade barriers and allow small-and-medium-sized enterprises everywhere to more easily participate in global commerce, and Daniel Zhang, Ma’s successor as CEO of Alibaba, is determined to make Ma’s vision real.

See you next year.

David Harris

Editor, Cargo Facts