Welcome to the eighteenth edition of 'Service Without Boundaries', the UFL Group's customer newsletter.

We have just held our annual conference in Hong Kong and celebrated the company's 45th birthday. Over 150 senior managers from our offices and agents around the world were present to discuss how they intend to make further investment in our niche services, IT hardware and infrastructure.

Welcome to the seventeenth edition of 'Service Without Boundaries', UFL's customer newsletter.

The recent announcement by the world's three largest container shipping lines to create an alliance to join forces and jointly run schedules in the Asia/Europe, transpacific and transatlantic trade lanes came as a surprise to UFL, as well as the shippers that we serve, and has led to much debate.

Welcome to the sixteenth edition of 'Service Without Boundaries', the UFL Group's customer newsletter.

No one needs to be reminded that the global economy has had a difficult time since 2008. In the intervening five years, there have been further dips and false dawns and pessimism remains. In relative terms, this faltering economic performance has been suffered for so long by markets around the world that some are asking whether this is the new norm?