Chinese New Year: Impact on logistics

In 2021, Chinese New Year falls on February 12, it is the biggest festival in China where people celebrate the beginning of a new year with their families. The week-long national public holiday has consequences on global supply chains. 

The following information provides an overview of some key facts of the festival and its possible impacts on logistics.

Dates and key facts

• February 12, 2021 marks the start of the Chinese New Year (the year of Ox).
• Chinese national holiday begins on February 11 and ends on February 17, meaning that most of the businesses, including DACHSER branches in China, will be closed and resumes on February 18.
• Factories and manufacturing sites used to be closed for a longer period of time. Production might pause already one week before Chinese New Year, some factories will only resume one month after.
• The long holiday allows workers in the city to travel back to their hometown for a family reunion, though it might not be the case this year due to the pandemic.

Impact on supply chain

• Extensive holidays in China can lead to delays to your shipments for up to one month.
• Due to the abovementioned closing period of manufacturing industries, there will be no productions from China for at least a week. Even though factories will be restarting gradually, operations will not resume to full swing immediately.
• Productions from other countries in Asia will also be impacted as some parts might come from China or the assembling processes are done there.
• Most shippers will stock up inventories that are sufficient to cover the Chinese New Year period, this leads to a pre-holiday cargo rush; it will also take some time after the festival to normalize the market conditions.

To avoid unnecessary price hikes and delays, it is strongly recommended to place bookings well in advance. At DACHSER, our logistics experts can help you to plan together. Feel free to discuss with us about your needs and we can work out the best to maintain your supply chain uninterrupted throughout the Chinese New Year.

Adverse weather conditions in Spain

Due to the Filomena storm that has affected all Spain in recent days and especially the Community of Madrid, we inform you of the following restrictions:

Road Transport:

• Traffic restrictions for heavy vehicles imposed by the DGT (partially open on some roads).
• Restrictions on access to industrial estates due to accumulation of snow and vehicles.
• Difficulty in collections, deliveries and shipments to other delegations. Journeys to and from Madrid may suffer significant delays.
• Difficulties in distribution activities throughout the week, mainly in the branch in Madrid.
• Temporary reduction of long-distance routes between delegations.

Air Transport

• MAD airport starts operating slowly but suffers long delays due to canceled flights.
• Handling personnel are severely restricted and therefore air cargo operations start to run very slowly.
• Customs operations are giving priority to express shipments.
• Road access to and from Madrid suffer significant restrictions.
• During this week, the alert is still active due to very low temperatures (in some places below -10ºC), so we still expect strong restrictions and incidents in all transport and distribution services.

If you have any questions, please contact your local contact at the respective DACHSER branch.

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On 24.12.2020, an agreement on future cooperation and trade was reached between the EU and the UK.

An essential point is that between EU and UK for goods deliveries from both areas no customs duties are to be levied. However, this does not mean that the administrative "customs clearance" will be eliminated. This means that all documents and customs relevant information must be submitted by the customer in advance and only after the shipment has been released by the customs team of DACHSER, the shipment can be accepted for dispatch.

Please note that from 01.01.2021 this applies to all shipments between the EU and UK, only shipments from the EU to Northern Ireland are excluded. In particular, proof of preferential origin of goods should be provided. The most important necessary information for exporters and importers can be found in the document below.

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Digital aids

Digitalization is advancing in many areas, one of which is logistics. No-code platforms and other digital solutions can help optimize processes in everyday work. The former are online modular systems that provide predefined elements to simplify and expedite the creation of digital applications. Even without in-depth IT knowledge, employees can digitalize analogue processes on their own without spending time programming. These and other digital aids are in use in the DACHSER network as well.