Lidl is set to provide its own sea freight services, having filed a trademark application for ‘Tailwind Shipping Lines’.
The name will apply to services including freight and cargo transportation, cargo ship transport, air cargo transport and import and export cargo handling services, according to a trademark filed with the EU Intellectual Property Office by Lidl in Germany.
“We can confirm that Lidl will use partially own capacities for sea freight in the future,” said a Lidl spokeswoman. “This is another component for securing our supply chains and the availability of goods in our stores.
“We would like to emphasise that we continue to rely to a large extent on the valuable and well-coordinated cooperation with our partners.”
The supermarket is not the first to take shipping its own hands. Asda chartered its own cargo ship to protect the availability of key festive products including decorations, toys, clothing and gifts ahead of Christmas 2021.
Speaking in November as Lidl announced its latest full-year results, then-Lidl GB CEO Christian Härtnagel said global shipping delays had caused problems for the discounter’s middle aisle general merchandise.
“We are ordering these hugely in advance, so production is happening hugely in advance and we usually have a good buffer in our system,” Härtnagel told The Grocer at the time.
“That buffer has completely gone, eaten up, leading to some delays.”
A quadrupling of shipping costs in 2021, caused in part by high demand for tech and pharma goods, has been one of the drivers of soaring food commodity prices that have led to high inflation this year.
Lidl GB has not provided a comment on the Tailwind Shipping Lines trademark.
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