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EXCLUSIVE: CargoWise customs message delays leave forwarders waiting for clearance

CargoWise users handling British and Japanese customs declarations suffered messaging delays on Wednesday, while the backlog had been fully cleared the following morning. Customer notifications seen by The Loadstar show WiseTech acknowledged an issue affecting message responses at 10.37am on 28 October. At 11.24, it confirmed that GB and Japan customs messaging were "particularly impacted". One UK forwarder said the disruption prevented its team from processing customs entries normally for much of the working day, leaving customers waiting and staff struggling to provide useful information. The forwarder said its biggest concern was the impact on customers, that were "waiting and complaining", adding "while operationally, we had very little we could tell them about when normal service would resume". WiseTech's initial notification said its senior eServices team was investigating backlogs. Subsequent updates at 12.04 and 14.07pm said engineers were working on mitigation, before a 3.51pm notice reported backlogs 'processing slowly'. Customers were instructed not to resubmit messages awaiting replies, as this would worsen the backlog and could cause confusing rejections once both messages were delivered. The forwarder criticised the support and escalation process, saying its team had followed the established reporting route, but received little actionable information as customer complaints mounted. "My concern isn't that a system outage happened, as clearly there will be occasions outside our control. It's whether we have a strong enough escalation and communication process when it does happen," the source said. WiseTech's notices show recovery work continued into the evening. At 8.47pm, the company said the backlog across most queues had been processed, but teams remained 'engaged on the core issue' and working towards full restoration. At 8.33am yesterday, it confirmed that the backlog had been fully processed, and messaging services had recovered. However, it added that teams would continue monitoring while addressing the underlying issue. The notifications span almost 22 hours, between acknowledgement and recovery confirmation, although they do not establish how long individual customers had been affected. The number of users impacted and the root cause remain unclear. The Loadstar has asked WiseTech Global to comment. The disruption follows a separate CargoWise outage reported by The Loadstar in June, when customers in several countries experienced log-in failures and electronic messaging problems. WiseTech subsequently attributed that incident to a faulty data update.

MSN Air Service to utilise Kalé platform at new Guyana cargo station

US ground handler MSN Air Service is expanding its use of Kalé's cargo handling platform in line with plans to add new stations globally. At the Tiaca Air Cargo Forum, MSN Air Service signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Kalé Info Solutions (Kalé) to deploy Galaxy as its standard technology platform at every new station it opens as part of its international expansion. The agreement comes as MSN expands its operations beyond JFK, with a new base at Cheddi Jagan International Airport in Guyana. "MSN is entering an exciting phase of growth, driven by a clear ambition to expand into international markets and strengthen our position in the global air cargo industry," said MSN Air Service group chief executive Manoj Singh. "For us, this expansion is about building a future-ready business, investing in technology and creating the capabilities to compete in an increasingly connected industry. "With Galaxy in use at JFK and committed for deployment across every new station we open, we are building a common technology platform to support operational consistency, visibility and scalability throughout our network." Galaxy supports import, export, and transfer operations through a single cargo handling platform. "International expansion can multiply operational complexity very quickly, and technology should remove that complexity rather than reproduce it at every new station," said Amar More, chief executive and co-founder of Kalé. "MSN is taking the right approach by building a common technology platform into its expansion strategy from the outset, rather than trying to retrofit systems as its network grows. "A common platform gives handlers consistent workflows, real-term visibility, and comparable performance data across locations, allowing them to add new operations without rebuilding their processes from scratch."

Ocean disruption offers no easy windfall for airfreight, warns DSV

Disruption to ocean shipping is not triggering a large-scale switch to airfreight - the cost of emergency lift is keeping most shippers at sea, according to DSV. Speaking at TIACA's Air Cargo Forum in Miami last week, head of global airfreight Achim Martinka said such decisions depended on whether the business impact of a delay justified paying the airfreight premium. "Most of the customers still stay on the seafreight side because they are not used to having shipments on time anyway," he said. "If you have two or three weeks' delay, this is a normal thing. And if you would switch to airfreight, it could be up to 20 times more expensive. So this is really a very tough financial decision to take." Conversion volumes remained limited, he said and added: "The conversion to air is still not in huge numbers. It's still on a lower level, from what we see." But shippers that wait too long before seeking an alternative risk are finding any available airfreight capacity has become prohibitively expensive. "Usually, our contracts are already signed for six or 12 months with the airlines. So everything which comes on a spontaneous, ad hoc basis will be even more expensive than the base load already on the aircraft," Mr Martinka explained. Where the duration of a disruption was uncertain, he said, shippers needed to begin arranging an airfreight solution. "Otherwise, you're going to be the last one, and then capacity is not affordable anymore." The competition to secure lift is also evident at Atlas Air, where Martin Drew, chief strategy and transformation officer, told The Loadstar forwarders and shippers increasingly wanted the certainty of dedicated capacity. "The contract durations we have are very lengthy, because forwarders, in particular, and shippers want that capacity locked-in," he said. "It helps from a planning perspective, knowing they've got that capacity, especially in an environment where supply is constrained." Atlas itself has demand for dedicated aircraft it cannot currently accommodate. Mr Drew said: "We've got a pipeline today of business that is tens of aircraft, and we can't service that demand." However, finding space is only one obstacle to switching modes. Mr Martinka warned that ocean shipments required new documentation and operational preparation, including checks on dangerous goods, aircraft dimensions, and how cargo would need to be rebuilt for flight. The practical difficulties were illustrated by Emir Pineda, director of air service development at Miami-Dade Aviation Department, who described an attempt to establish a sea-air movement of Honduran okra to the UK via Miami and Amsterdam. "We were able to get a permit from USDA to transport perishable product from Central America via ship to Miami, then take it from Miami, without opening it, to the airport and then put it on an airplane and fly it to Europe. Sounds pretty simplistic, but it was actually quite complicated. "It got to Miami: two containers - that's a lot of cargo for one airplane. "We had to find the capacity on a freighter, because it had to go all in one shipment [and the] capacity had to be available on the day the ship was arriving, because you only had two days to move it. Those were the conditions USDA set. "We also had to maintain the cool chain throughout the logistics supply chain, because it had to keep a certain temperature. "Once it got to Amsterdam, refrigerated trucks trucked it over to the UK. In the end, it worked. One time. "Why only one time? Because of the complexity behind that. You had to get a shipper to agree to get it on the ship to Miami, and then you had to find the capacity on a consistent basis to move 60 tonnes for several weeks. "What do you tell that customer when the season's over? 'Could you bring back the freight?'," asked Mr Pineda."That doesn't work for forwarders; they want consistency. They want capacity availability when they need it." Mr Martinka said most shippers had developed some form of emergency plan since Covid, but he was not seeing a regular shift of ocean volumes into airfreight simply to maintain a contingency route. "It is certainly a part of a resilience plan, which perhaps needs to be tested from time to time," he said. Forwarders and airlines had, nevertheless, become faster at adapting their networks to disruption, he added. DSV's ACMI capacity allowed it to change destinations when customers needed alternatives. "We have our own network, so we can decide every day with our ACMI flights where to fly. We can switch immediately if that's needed for the customer. "The good thing in air cargo is that airfreight is like water: it's going to find its way."