News & Insights

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

MVT, Metro’s cloud-based, hyper secure, operations and supply chain management system is moving up to version 4.0 Multi award-winning MVT connects shippers to their entire supply chain, providing real-time visibility, milestone event management, control and intelligence, in a secure cloud ba... Read more

In the last few months EMEA freight thefts alone amounted to more than £16 million, but there are many more supply chain threats than criminals. At any given point in time, more than 6,000 vessels carrying containers are sailing the world’s seas and while fires and capsizes make internation... Read more

It’s the 2nd anniversary of the US-China trade war and US importers are rushing back to China for inventory replenishment While the overall US trade deficit with China fell to US$26.96 billion in May, compared to US$33.71 billion in June 2018, US imports from China jumped to an eight-month h... Read more