High Capacity
Spiral
Conveyors
High Capacity Spirals are in
response to our customers’ need to
go higher and handle more weight.
They can handle double the weight
capacity of our regular spirals at speeds
up to 200 FPM.
Optionally these spirals allow loads to
enter or exit the High Capacity Spirals
at intermediate elevations. New special
induction and divert conveyors have
individually adjustable conveying surfaces
to match the spiral pitch, assuring a
smooth and reliable operation.
For application assistance or more
information, give us a call or visit
www.ryson.com.
300 Newsome Drive • Yorktown, VA 23692
Phone: (757) 898-1530 • Fax: (757) 898-1580
VERTICAL CONVEYING SOLUTIONS
sistently occur since the recession ended
in mid- to late-2009. Freight traffic
bounced in 2010 and 2011 off historically low levels, fell back in 2012 and
2013, and recovered in 2014. However,
volumes posted an anemic 1.9-percent
year-over-year rise in 2015, IATA said.
The group forecasts a 3-percent volume
increase in 2016.
It’s hard to see the current landscape
changing, at least over the near term.
Helmut Kaspers, chief operating officer,
global air and ocean freight for Dutch
forwarding giant Ceva Logistics, said
there is “continuous” carrier demand
for passenger planes, notably from
Middle Eastern carriers that account
for 45 percent of the wide-bodied belly
space ordered by the top 15 airlines.
The steady flow of demand could keep
the lower-deck market oversupplied for
years, he said.
OVERBLOWN CONCERNS?
Crabtree of Boeing said the hand wringing over excess capacity is a red herring of sorts. According to Boeing data,
about 65 percent of the 23,000 jets
in all fleets today are narrow-bodied
aircraft that lack the below-deck space
to accommodate the 96- by 125-inch
pallets that are standard equipment for
big airfreight users. About 8,000 are the
pallet-friendly wide-bodied aircraft of
various configurations, and about 1,700
of those are freighters. Narrow-bodies
will account for much of the future
plane supply, meaning a large chunk of
lift entering the market will be mostly
irrelevant to shippers and forwarders,
Crabtree said.
Though belly space will grow at a faster clip than freighter capacity, freighters
will still handle about 55 to 60 percent
of global air trade for years to come,
according to Boeing projections. While
big cargo users appreciate the flexibility
that comes with access to hundreds of
passenger flights a day, they are aware
that flight operations are driven by the
needs of the passenger segment and that
any change based on that priority could
adversely affect them.
Freighter services are more expensive
than belly space because passenger rev-
enue isn’t available to offset operating
expenses. However, freighters provide
users with the reliability and control
they can never get when utilizing belly
lift. Freighters can handle outsized cargo
and hazardous materials shipments that
can’t be fitted in, or aren’t allowed on,
passenger aircraft. They also have a huge
capacity advantage critical in the highly
concentrated industrial markets where
much of global air commerce moves.
For example, in the Asia-to-North
America trade lane, it would take 150
passenger flights to provide lift equal to
10 freighter flights, according to Boeing
estimates. “Freighters aren’t going away,
no matter what a lot of people may
think,” Crabtree said.
Neither seemingly is air freight, which
continually takes a licking and keeps on
ticking. In the past 16 years, the trade
has suffered through two recessions, a
financial meltdown, the near-collapse of
the euro, a terrorist attack using the tools
of its trade, and a persistently sluggish
global economy that has pushed shippers to convert some of their air business
to cheaper ocean freight. Still, global
airfreight traffic is expected to grow by
about 4. 7 percent a year through 2034,
Boeing said in the most recent forecast.
There will always be the next hot product that, for various reasons, needs to
be in customers’ hands right away. The
latest might be lithium-ion batteries,
which have found a potentially lucrative
second life as the power behind the bat-tery-powered automobile. And far-flung
markets away from the traditional global
trade lanes will open for production
and consumption. For businesses and
consumers that don’t have the patience
to wait for weeks for a ship to make the
haul, air is the only answer.
Ironically, Kaspers of Ceva said it
could be a challenge to find appropriate and consistent capacity to support
emerging markets because they are not
the industry’s typical origin-destination
traffic lanes. Given the expansion of
belly space, those might be the only places on earth where freight capacity might
not be in abundance.
