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<\/a>Autumn arrived in England a few weeks ago \u2013 and it seemed to come very suddenly! After a beautiful Spring and Summer, with sunny days and gentle long evenings, we are now experiencing typical November weather \u2013 grey days, wind and rain! Like most of Europe, we changed the clocks at the end of October, so that means that although the mornings are a little lighter, it gets dark at 4:30pm. London is famous for its \u201cSherlock Holmes\u201d fogs, but we haven\u2019t had any of them yet. The trees are nearly bare, the leaves have all been blown off the branches \u2013 and I spend many hours sweeping them up from the path outside my front door.<\/p>\nAs you reported in your recent EF International Newsletter, Covid 19 cases increased again here in September and October \u2013 so we are now in \u201clockdown\u201d for the month of November. The Government expected this to happen, they knew that as soon as the Autumn arrived, people would be staying indoors more. It will last until the beginning of December, when the restrictions will be lifted a little.<\/p>\n
The current lockdown means restaurants, pubs, bars and coffee-shops are all closed, although many of them are still selling take-away food and drinks. Supermarkets are still open, to sell groceries – but all the other \u201cnon-essential\u201d shops are closed. Also, all the gyms, golf courses and football clubs have had to close down. However, professional football is still taking place \u2013 so there are a lot of football games on the TV.<\/p>\n
The majority of people are still working, especially in industries which are not directly affected by Covid. Where possible, they are working from home, so the business district in Central London is very empty, with very few people going into their offices. But if you are employed in the travel, hotel and entertainment business, of course there is no work for you. For these people, the Government introduced a scheme to enable their wages to be covered. The system is called \u201cfurlough\u201d \u2013 a very strange, very old, English word, which no-one had previously used. The furlough scheme is costing the country a lot of money, but at least it means that people\u2019s jobs are being protected and retained – and they can hopefully return to work when things return to normal.<\/p>\n
At the weekends, I go for a pleasant walk near my house. I live in a suburb in the south-west of London, on the banks of the River Thames. It is very near to a very old town called Kingston \u2013 which is normally a busy shopping and business centre. The kings of England were crowned here in the 10th Century, and there is a Coronation Stone still in the middle of the town. We are also near to Hampton Court Palace, which was one of the palaces of Henry the Eighth, the famous King of England in the 16th Century. Normally, it is a very peaceful walk \u2013 but these days the path by the river gets very busy, as it is a convenient place for people to go for a walk or a run or a bike ride, especially as the gym and other sports are all closed.<\/p>\n The recent news about the new vaccines sounds very positive, but we know that it will take some time before we return to normal life \u2013 business and leisure travel, conferences and exhibitions, going into offices.<\/p>\n It is over a year since the last Intermodal Europe exhibition, and the next one will be another year from now \u2013 we are already planning for Amsterdam in October 2021. Intermodal Asia in Shanghai is scheduled to take place in July. We hope that it will be possible for international visitors to come to China then.<\/p>\n My colleague Kate and I are fine and keeping busy with a lot of work to do. Kate has been working at home for the last 6 months, while I have been coming into the office every day. We are still managing the four container industry associations \u2013 the Container Owners Association, the International Tank Container Organisation, the Cargo Incident Notification System and the Container Self-Storage and Traders Association (CSTA). We provide a lot of technical and market reports for these associations, and we are also organising webinars for them. These webinars have been very successful, with about 70-80 participants each time.<\/p>\n The CSTA (www.containa.org) continues to grow. This Association serves both the Container Trading and the Container Self-Storage Operators markets and we now have about 70 members. We have published a number of Technical Reports, Guidance Documents and Newsletters, which have created positive comments. We have also organised three CSTA Webinars \u2013 on the \u201cOutlook for the Container Market\u201d, \u201cContainer Coatings for Traders and for Self-Storage Operators\u201d and the \u201cOutlook for Container Trading\u201d. These have been well-attended with some good feedback.<\/p>\n I hope you, your family and the EF International team are well. And I look forward to seeing you next year.<\/p>\n With very best regards from London<\/p>\n Patrick<\/p>\n <\/p>\n About Patrick Hicks<\/p>\n Patrick Hicks studied at Cambridge University and has worked in the Container Shipping business since 1978, when he joined the P&O Shipping Company as a trainee. For many years, he published specialist magazines about cargo, containers, chemical distribution and railways, and he organised many conferences and exhibitions around the world. For the last 15 years, he has managed four international trade associations – the Container Owners Association (COA), the International Tank Container Organisation (ITCO), the Cargo Incident Notification System (CINS) and, more recently, the Container Self-Storage and Traders Association (CSTA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mr. Patrick Hicks is one of the devoted readers of my Container Market Report. He hosts and is the executive director of the Container Owner’s Association (COA), which takes place …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-container-market-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1576"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1593,"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576\/revisions\/1593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ef-international.com\/e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Our first lockdown was from March to June, when it was really quiet outside. People were staying in their homes and gardens, and just going out for a walk or on their bicycles for an hour a day. This time, it seems different to me \u2013 with a lot of cars on the roads and the traffic feels almost normal. Near our office, the streets are quite busy with a lot of pedestrians. In the shops and on public transport (buses, trains and the underground railway) everyone must wear a mask. But outside, it is not a legal requirement, which means that about half the people walking on the streets are wearing a mask.<\/p>\n<\/a>\u3000\u3000<\/a><\/p>\n