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TAAG operates inaugural Luanda-Lusaka freighter service

TAAG Angola Airlines has launched its inaugural cargo service from Luanda, Angola to Lusaka, Zambia as it strives to increase its market share in Africa's airfreight sector. The first flight on the route from Dr. António Agostinho Neto International Airport in Luanda to Kenneth Kaunda International Airport in Lusaka took off on 24 July. The flight was operated with a Boeing 737-800 freighter carrying 12.8 tonnes of cargo that originated in Amsterdam. This cargo included "machine parts, IT equipment, personal effects and other high-value goods", said TAAG. Initially, the Luanda-Lusaka cargo route will operate on a weekly basis. The operation is supported by a strategic partnership with NAC2000, appointed as TAAG's ramp & cargo handling service provider and general sales and services agent (GSSA) in Zambia. "Initial demand confirms the strong potential of the new route, with cargo loads of 14 and 16 tonnes already scheduled for the following operations," said TAAG. During the fourth quarter of 2026, TAAG also plans to further expand its cargo network with the launch of a new route to Libreville, Gabon. Meanwhile, the launch of the Lusaka route forms part of the airline's North-South logistics corridor, creating a new gateway for cargo originating from several European countries, China and Brazil, while expanding distribution opportunities across the African continent, said TAAG. With this new connection, TAAG now offers dedicated freighter services to Lagos, Brazzaville, Abidjan, Accra, Kinshasa, Nairobi, Johannesburg and Lusaka, further strengthening logistics connectivity across key African markets. The new operation also supports the objectives of the Airlift Zambia initiative by creating improved conditions for the export of products such as beef, poultry, horticultural products and other goods.

5U AI raises $3.2m to scale up its offering

Munich-headquartered freight agentic AI specialist 5U AI is currently building a digital workforce platform for European freight forwarders and has revealed that it has raised $3.2m in pre-seed funding to scale up its software offering and enable it to continue to grow. The pre-seed round was led by London-based Emerge Capital and will support product development and 5U AI's European go-to-market programme. Founded in 2025 by Technical University of Munich graduates Yagiz Abik and Fehmi Şener, 5U AI is backed by senior logistics executives, including former leaders from DHL, GEODIS, DSV, Maersk, and CEVA Logistics. 5U AI solutions support freight forwarders, carriers, and 3PLs that want to reduce manual administration, improve operational decision making and scale customer service without replacing their existing systems. Its digital workforce platform uses AI workers to manage operational tasks across air, sea, and road freight operations, including quotations, bookings, shipment tracking, invoice reconciliation, data entry, and routine administration tasks. The AI workers capture the reasoning behind each freight decision as they work, helping teams build knowledge that can improve future processes, rather than simply automating isolated tasks, 5U AI explained. Chief executive Abik noted: "Freight forwarding is full of decisions that are still trapped in inboxes, spreadsheets, and people's heads. "We are not building another chatbot that answers questions and disappears, we are building AI workers that understand freight operations, carry out the work, and capture the reasoning behind every decision, so teams can scale their knowledge as well as their capacity." Integrated technology The 5U AI technology works within existing freight systems and uses multi-agent AI trained for logistics workflows, including handling the complex exceptions and manual decisions that make forwarding operations difficult to automate with the use of generic AI tools or legacy automation. 5U AI technology is already live with forwarders and carriers across Europe, such as with TCI International Logistics, which employs its AI workers across air and ocean freight operations. 5U AI is to grow its workforce as part of its scale-up, and has plans to hire across product, engineering, operations, commercial, and customer-related functions. Abik opined: "AI is one of the most exciting developments logistics has seen for a generation, but its value will depend on people who understand the industry and want to build practical tools that solve real operational problems. "We are actively looking for people who want to join us at this early stage and help shape the next chapter of freight forwarding."

Houthis set to further muddy the already troubled Middle East water

This is getting very messy indeed - a drone of some sort yesterday hit an LNG tanker in the Egyptian port of Damietta, at the northern mouth of the Suez Canal, potentially dragging the wider Middle East into the conflict surrounding Iran. Let's try to unpick this a little. The US and Iran continue to trade air strikes across the Gulf, establishing Hormuz as the epicentre of a war zone; the US and Saudi Arabia launched attacks on Iranian proxies in Iraq; the Saudis are blockading Yemeni ports and launching air strikes on Houthi-controlled airports; in return, the Houthis are attacking Saudi tankers, thus putting the Red Sea on the verge of becoming another war zone. These are connected events and theatres, but also disconnected; they are correlated, but not entirely causal - a détente between the US and Iran would not necessarily lead to a cessation of hostilities in the Red Sea, and vice versa. While the Houthis are clearly affiliated with Iran, they do not take orders from Tehran, evidenced by the fact that it has taken them this long to become involved in the conflict and that the catalyst was the Saudi attacks on Sanaa Airport, rather than the US and Israeli air strikes on Iran. Yemeni exporter Hashim Al-Omeisy, told this year's TPM in Long Beach the day after the first US and Israeli attacks were launched, how the Houthi and Iranian paths had diverged over the past few years - it is well worth a quick read. But one key fact quickly become apparent since the group began attacking merchant shipping in the Red Sea in late 2023: controlling the Bab Al Mandad strait is a great money-earner. "Their tax on the Red Sea was to get legitimacy, but it was also for economic leverage, because a lot of shipping companies have been paying levies to be allowed passage - so they've been making a lot of money from them," he said. Events in Hormuz over the past four months have amplified that message, and the prospect the Houthis would return to this strategy felt like an unlocked door simply waiting to be pushed open. "Unspecified regional sources told Reuters yesterday that the Houthis may start to impose fees on international commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea and Bab al Mandeb Strait," the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) writes today. "An Arab state official claimed the Houthis discussed prospects of establishing a regulatory authority to charge fees for vessels transiting the Bab al Mandeb, similar to Iran's Persian Gulf Strait Authority," it says, adding that China appears to have already voted with its feet, so to speak. "Unspecified sources told Reuters the People's Republic of China has held direct negotiations with the Houthis to secure safe and toll-free passage for PRC vessels navigating the southern Red Sea". However, it adds: "It is unclear whether the Houthis intend to establish a fee system in order to achieve other potential strategic objectives, such as securing codified permanent control over the Bab al Mandeb." For the main tranche of commercial shipping companies that operate according to international law, and are thus subject to sanctions regimes, it is not so simple as both the Houthis and the Iranian regime are sanctioned entities, and paying either Hormuz or Red Sea transit fees would be illegal. For container carriers and their customers, there is some solace in that the peak shipping season has begun to wane and that there is already a long-standing Plan B (Cape of Good Hope), in conjunction with just-about-enough capacity that container supply chains should remain intact for the remainder of the year. The broader picture is deeply troubling: shipper hopes of a full-scale Red Sea reopening are in abeyance, freight costs will remain elevated and subject to sudden spikes, and the longer-term economic impact is getting grimmer by the day.