NEWS BLOG

When the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) enforced a major fuel reform in 2020, most industry stakeholders hailed it as a milestone in sustainable maritime trade.

The logistics sector no longer operates in isolation. An influential report on evolving logistics systems, published in March 2025, concluded that realistic progress towards Net-Zero will depend on far closer collaboration between ports, shipping lines, inland carriers, and technology providers.

Europe’s push towards cleaner freight transport is accelerating, but are its logistics networks ready for the transition?

Europe’s finished vehicle logistics (FVL) sector has entered a challenging phase. Since 2020, flat production volumes, limited vessel capacity, and ongoing price pressures are creating bottlenecks across the supply chain; from factories to final delivery.

The global automotive sector is undergoing one of its biggest structural changes in decades.

Global vehicle transportation continues to develop, particularly as OEMs diversify their products and strategies across regional and national plants, knockdown facilities, and final assembly hubs. Flows now mix fully built units (FBU), with semi-knocked down (SKD) and completely knocked down (CKD) kits, creating a more complex outbound logistics landscape. Each format introduces different engineering complexities, handling requirements, and exposure risks that must be managed throughout the shipping process. In this article, we look at five of the most persistent challenges in modern automotive transport, as well as practical ways to mitigate them across FBU, SKD, and CKD routes.

As Indonesia continues to modernise its law-enforcement fleet, efficient and secure logistics play a crucial role in getting new police vehicles where they are needed most. This week, another shipment of new police cars was successfully loaded for transport using Trans-Rak International’s R-RAK vehicle racking system, a solution that PT Nusantara Auto Trans has relied on for more than a decade.

Every vehicle leaves the production line in a tightly controlled environment, but its first true engineering test begins the moment it enters the outbound logistics chain. For businesses overseeing automotive transport, the challenge is to maintain these factory-level standards throughout a sequence of handling events, modal transfers, and environmental conditions that were never part of the original design brief. Understanding this full car transport journey, not just as a logistics process but as an engineering stress cycle, is essential for safeguarding quality throughout long-distance vehicle transportation.

The continuing growth of electric vehicle (EV) exports has added a new layer of complexity to global vehicle transportation, reshaping how businesses evaluate route safety, planning strategies, and handling procedures. Unlike internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, EVs include engineering and safety considerations that extend beyond the cosmetic damage concerns traditionally associated with transporting cars. Battery integrity, underbody clearance, weight distribution, and consistent environmental conditions now play a central role in determining which transport methods are best suited for long-distance movements.

International car transport shipping has always been shaped by practical limitations: variable port infrastructure, inconsistent handling standards, and long dwell times that extend the vehicles’ exposure to risk. In recent years, geopolitical instability and uncertainty have extended this list – a situation that is unlikely to change in 2026. These factors create a conundrum for businesses overseeing global outbound flows: how to keep supply chains stable while local conditions shift. Also, as supply chains widen and new production hubs emerge (e.g. in Indonesia and South America), the challenges facing international car shipping have become more complex, and the solutions more varied.