News & Insights

Supply chains between Europe and China continue to face significant pandemic-related disruption, leading to an upsurge in interest for rail freight solutions from the region. Reacting to expanding demand, we are increasing our rail freight coverage, to embrace all major China sourcing regions. ... Read more

As we begin the economic recovery from COVD-19 lockdown, the shipping lines are increasing vessel calls through service changes, merging services together and varying transit times to maximise utilisation, which is disrupting port and haulage operations.  The increased load factors (numbe... Read more

Metro solutions sit in four areas of expertise - forwarding, supply chain, outsourcing, technology - but there are no barriers between these areas, with our personnel working in multiple area simultaneously, to better serve their clients. Experienced freight forwarder Kerry Bate joined Metro i... Read more

In this unprecedented pandemic, trade is essential to save lives and livelihoods, which means supply chains need to operate at some level of normality, to keep that trade flowing. The OECD Interim Economic Outlook in March forecast global growth halved to 1.5%, but their most recent estimates ... Read more

Prior to the Coronavirus lockdown, Metro’s learning and development opportunities were expanding and a massive range of activity was in progress. Then bang! The Covid-19 grenade went off and other solutions were needed. As we went into March the Metro training team had a full calendar of act... Read more

On the 1st January 2021 - Brexit - no customs border posts will appear between the UK and the EU, but you may need to pay customs duty and import VAT when goods pass across the new ‘border’ and you'll need to submit customs declarations and pay administration fees for their completion and sub... Read more

Air freight rates from China are rising over the last two weeks, due to falling capacity as passenger-freighters are forced out of the market, due to unviable commercial return. Yield is just one of the reasons. The PAX carriers are also impacted by weak, if not nonexistent passenger demand, r... Read more

Aggressive capacity management has supported vessel load factors during the pandemic, but has negatively impacted the overall service delivered by many shipping lines. Daniel’s Export Customer Services team has been crucial in protecting Metro customers’ supply chains. Export Customer Serv... Read more

On Monday 13th July, HMG delivered their new Border Operating Model covering how UK Imports and UK Exports will look from 1st January 2021. To date, it is the most comprehensive model that has been released, and finally provides clarity to UK businesses as we move towards the Brexit door in th... Read more

Effective training increases job satisfaction and morale. It provides motivation to the individual and increases efficiencies in processes for the business, while increasing the capacity of the wider team to adopt new technologies and methods. Metro believe that effective training creates comp... Read more

With automotive demand flat-lining in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the knock-on effects to global roll-on, roll-off (RoRo) shipping has been profound, with ships removed from service, or earmarked for recycling, raising doubts that the RoRo sector will recover fully. The backbone of glob... Read more

Aggressive capacity management has supported vessel load factors and freight rates during the pandemic, leaving unfortunate shippers to face lower service quality and cargo roll-overs as carriers favour higher-paying spot cargo. Despite significantly reduced bunker costs in the second quarter ... Read more