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When a person dies in Upper Mustang in Nepal...
If they've led a good life and the stars are correctly aligned, the body is offered as food to vultures in a sacred ritual called sky burial.
My name is Tashi Bister and I've come to meet the monks and morticians keeping the ceremony alive.
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From container ships changing course to passenger jets waiting for clearance.
Saving at least 10 days transit time.
We can then deliver those goods more quickly to our customer and start turning that money back into cash flow.
China wants the world to see its progress.
Safety is key to this project.
But will it fly the flag abroad?
Welcome to World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Sam Fenwick.
Two years on, one of the world's biggest shipping companies says it's preparing to return to the Red Sea.
And in aviation, Chinese-made passenger jets may soon be edging closer to European skies.
So first today, one of the largest shipping container companies is preparing to return to a key global trade route.
Maersk, the world's second largest operator, says that it's going to start routing some ships back through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
The route has been largely closed for the past two years, after attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels forced vessels to divert around Africa.
For businesses shipping bulky goods like furniture from the Far East.
Those diversions have meant long journeys, higher costs and tighter margins.
Earlier, I spoke to Rachel Waring.
She's co-managing director of a British company that supplies furniture to hotels and restaurants.
In our game you are supplying furniture for clients that need those items, either for openings or for refurbishment programs, where there's customers coming in to stay in these hotels or But in the restaurants you know.
So it is time critical.
And although we tried to build in a bit of a buffer, so it's not too skin of your teeth, the delay was significant because it wasn't just what ended up being about a 10-day extended transit.
It was much longer than that at the beginning.
And we didn't know whether this was just going to be a fortnight, a month delay turns out to have been a good few years, and it's only just you know, it's only one or two firms that have started opening up that route again.
So, I don't think we're at the end of it yet.
And what has that delay done to your business?
We didn't have added expense initially because everything was already agreed and paid up front and you know the terms.
Heads of terms were already drawn up for all those shipping routes.
But it meant when we wanted to knock-on effects in future containers, then all of the pricing did go up.
As that route now starts to reopen, what impact could that have on your business and some of the stuff that you might import from the Far East?
Obviously, the first thing is you have you're saving at least 10 days transit time, and that that's valuable because it means we have to pay in advance for our shipments.
I think we pay about 40% with order and then the balance when it's on the water.
So that's going to help cash flow wise, because the transit times much quicker, so we can then deliver those goods more quickly to our customer and start turning that money back in, you know, back into cash flow, and also it will mean that the container shipping prices will come down, which we can then share with our customers.
So it is definitely good news.
But, to be honest, things have naturally changed.
Our reliance on chinese goods has significantly diminished.
So whether that red sea scenario was one of the final nails in the coffin i don't know, But we're definitely importing a lot less from Asia than we were say, five years ago.
That was Rachel Waring there.
She runs a furniture business in the UK.
So what does a return to the Red Sea mean for global shipping costs and supply chains?
Joining us now is Lorianne LaRocco.
She is a global supply chain reporter for CNBC and an author who writes about the shipping industry.
Thanks for joining us today.
Explain to us then how important this shipping route is to world trade.
Sure.
Thanks for having me, Sam.
This is a significant route for global trade for the fact that it is the fastest.
And as the furniture company was telling you prior, that trade at rest is not making money.
So the longer that your vessel is going around, like here with the Cape of Good Hope, to avoid the Houthi attacks, longer it waits for you to get your product and for you to, you know, make your money.
In terms of when you're looking at the trade route from Asia to Europe.
It's more than just So.
A vessel actually goes to various countries, if you will, on the various strengths, until it gets to its final destination.
When it comes to Maersk, they are doing a very staggered approach.
That's the way that they describe this.
Because if you just automatically move all your vessels to go back up through the Suez Canal, it's going to impact and create congestion.
Well, that's what I was going to ask you, because I remember when this all started and there were ships all over the world and they were all in the wrong place.
And that was also causing some chaos, wasn't there?
There was the pandemic as well, where everything was in the wrong place and you didn't know where your ship with your container was.
So how long could it take for things to return to normality?
Well, I mean, we're not going to have normality for months because you're only having a handful of ships traversing through the Suez.
And so until you have all the different ocean carriers going through Hapag-Lloyd, which is an alliance partner of Maersk, they are not going through the Suez right now.
And so this is a good time because with Lunar New Year, you have your front loading of products now all around the world coming from Asia, because in February, at the end of January, all of February, the factories are closed.
So you're not going to get your product in.
And so this is a good time to kind of rejigger your trade routes with the amount of vessels, because you're going to have less volume going into those ports.
So you will have some congestion, but it's not going to be horrible.
They just have to be mindful.
The situation in Gaza is still fragile.
Do you think that it is going to be the trade route that all shipping companies want to go through?
Is it safe enough, or might they think that actually, because of this fragility in the Middle East, that they might continue to go around Africa?
First and foremost, with every ocean carrier around the world, large and small.
They care about their seafarers.
And so if there is any type of risk where heaven forbid their vessel can get damaged in some sort of geopolitical conflict, they will wait.
And you're seeing that.
You're seeing a cautious approach and a handful of vessels going through the Suez.
And as we kind of go through this and as with Gaza and whatever's going on with Iran right now, you can't rule that out.
It's going to be a wait and see approach.
And so this is good for global trade.
It will provide more certainty as it relates to all consumers seeing lower prices.
Absolutely not.
You are not going to see a lot of prices drop as a result of this.
Because of the global uncertainty?
Yeah, exactly.
Because of the global uncertainty.
And, to be honest, how many retailers out there actually lower prices once you have a base that is set, with consumers buying at higher prices.
OK, well, thank you very much, Lorianne LaRocco there joining us from CNBC.
She is a global supply chain reporter and she also writes about shipping.
Thank you very much for your insight.
So we're going to move on now.
The internet blackout in Iran has entered its second week.
Iranian authorities shut down access last Thursday amid a crackdown on widespread anti-government protests.
Cutting off the internet isn't Just a political act, it is also an economic one.
Online payments, trade, logistics and small businesses all depend on connectivity.
And some new research suggests that the shutdown is costing the Iranian economy around 37 million a day.
To understand the scale of the blackout, I spoke to Alp Toker.
He's director of NetBlocks, and it tracks internet disruptions around the world.
He did that research.
It's been a week since authorities switched off the internet.
Our telemetry shows national connectivity at just around 1% of previously measured levels.
So that's essentially the entire nation falling offline, in addition to things like phone calls also being disabled.
So only 1% still working.
Do we know where that 1% is?
One would presume it might be within the government.
Indeed, our assessment suggests that the remaining networks may be in use by the government.
Leadership figures have continued to post online on social media platforms like X, putting forward the regime's version of events, even while they switch off their own people.
So you've calculated that the shutdown is costing 37 million US dollars every day.
How have you come up with that figure?
Right.
So our assessment, our methodology has reached that figure.
So we now have an assessment of some 280 million US dollars, or some 200000 pounds, through the shutdown so far.
And that's a cost to the GDP of Europe.
Iran.
This is calculated by really trying to understand how money flows and where it might be lost.
So this brings in parts of the digital economy, but also dependent economies, also the formal and informal economies.
So you're putting these all in perspective and then figuring out what is then unable to operate during that period.
And can you see from your data what parts of the economy might be hit more than others?
Yeah, I mean, we have a sense of what the impact might be.
Obviously, it's not a perfect science.
And a lot of these figures aren't published even by Iran's own government.
But, for example, we know that when we look at the digital economy, many international platforms, particularly Western platforms, social media are actually already banned in Iran.
So we can't use these standard calculations, considering Facebook adverts, online YouTube revenue, as simple indicators.
We have to look a bit deeper at those dependent economies, and also not just the purely digital economy, but also completely unrelated industries that may depend on making their sales through online platforms.
So from what you've said, it's probably really hitting normal everyday people really hard.
Well, that's right.
The regime, in essence, already has some mechanisms to continue its own activities even in the absence of the Internet, as is shown by the fact they've preserved a slice of connectivity for themselves and keep posting online.
So it's really something that's going to impact ordinary businesses obviously small businesses of all types, even beyond the online businesses, but also small to middle sized businesses, which may not have a political position either way.
So it's really across the board, but particularly hard hitting for those who are already struggling, those who are protesting.
And, if you recall, it was just around a week ago that the government tried to quell these protests by offering something paltry like 7 a month in compensation, which the people were offended by.
Can you compare this shutdown with previous shutdowns in Iran or even blackouts elsewhere around the world?
The economic figures obviously shift year by year and it takes some time for these indicators to update.
But what we do know is that this is now a week-long disruption.
This is approaching.
It's actually surpassed the core record that Iran had for a total national blackout.
So we are in uncharted territory.
At some point, authorities might need to, in terms of industry, come up and get some air, simply because it's currently suffocating so much of the nation's industry.
There might be a need to somehow restore some connectivity.
There are some reports that Starlink might be available to some people if they have a Starlink receiver box.
Could that help in some instances, do you think?
We've been in touch with many Iranians involved in all walks of life and all types of activities.
And an interesting thing struck me.
It's that there are quite a few.
In fact, I would say probably the majority of Starlink devices could well be in the hands of small businesses, business owners who use it not so much for activism but for online trade.
So in some sense that is enabling, or has been enabling, business to flow, even for a few days after the main shutdown.
But at the moment The regime is cracking down heavily on those satellite units, triangulating devices and potentially throwing people in prison or worse.
So it's a risk that we know many people have decided not to take anymore, especially if they're just using it for business or for selling something online.
They've just packed away their kit.
So that isn't really helping out in the way one might expect just because of the risks it carries.
That was Alp Toka there.
He is a director at Netblocks, which is a company that tracks internet disruptions around the world.
You're listening to World Business Report from the BBC World Service with me, Sam Fenwick.
Now, if you've received a gift card from Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman or Neymar Marcus over Christmas, you might want to use it quickly, because all three of them are offering very steep discounts.
But there's growing questions over whether those cards will have any worth in a few weeks time.
And that's because earlier this week, their parent company, Sachs Global, filed for bankruptcy protection.
And now there's another twist to this story, because Amazon says its 475 million investment in the company has gone the same way as those gift cards.
It's saying it's now effectively worthless.
Well, let's talk to Walter Todd now.
He's president and chief investment officer at Greenwood Capital in South Carolina.
First of all, Walter, tell us about Amazon's role in Sachs Group.
Yes.
So the partnership started when Amazon invested, as you said, 475 million in late 2024, in conjunction with the acquisition of Neiman Marcus by Sachs.
Then they rolled out this partnership called Saks on Amazon to launch Saks brands and clothes and merchandise on Amazon, which is an interesting juxtaposition of luxury on Amazon, which may be why it didn't work.
But I think ultimately the downfall of this situation was too much debt.
You know, debt works great when things are going well.
It accentuates returns, but it can bury you when things turn south.
And that's what happened here.
So that's what's kind of gone wrong for Sachs Group or Sachs Global.
Is it unusual for a company like Amazon to publicly say that their investment is now effectively worthless?
Yeah, I assume they had conversations in private before they came out swinging in public.
And obviously they were unhappy with or displeased with any progress that they made on the private talks.
And they decided to bring it out into the public forum to try to fight it that way.
So we'll see what happens.
I mean, ultimately, in a bankruptcy, an equity investment, it's not unusual for it to go to zero.
So I'm not sure what Amazon expected.
Yeah, I mean, like people who might have gift cards or whatever.
You've got to get in there quick to spend them, because I suppose some of the shops might not be around after it's been through Chapter 11.
What does it tell us then about luxury retail in the US?
Yeah, I think it tells you not so much about the health of luxury.
It's just how people shop for luxury, I think, is different.
They shop direct with brands in a lot of cases now.
There's a lot of companies like Rent the Runway and Fashion Pass, where you can rent the luxury clothes for a month or a weekend.
So I just think the way they shop for luxury has changed, and Saks was unable to adopt to that.
Has it still got quite a lot of stores across the U.S.?
Their stores tended to be bigger, so they didn't have a large number of them, but they were very prominent.
If you've been to New York City, there's a huge Saks Fifth Avenue store there, as well as Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman as well.
So they tended to be bigger, flashier, more expensive in that case.
Prime Real Estate, again more expensive, which maybe again may have contributed to their downfall.
Walter, we will leave it there.
Thank you very much for joining us today on the programme.
Now.
For many people around the world, Christmas and New Year celebrations mean drinking a little bit more than usual.
And then for some, that's followed by a bit of a reset and a break from alcohol across the month of January.
That's there's a shift away from alcohol not just for one month of the year.
More people are choosing to cut back or quit altogether all year round.
Here's our reporter Imran Rahman-Jones.
He's been looking at the growth of the non-alcoholic drink market.
It starts off there in the mash tun.
We're at a brewery just outside Scotland's capital Edinburgh, and founder Sonia Mitchell is explaining how her beer is made.
But there's something different about the product here.
It's brewed with almost no alcohol.
Sonia's company Jump Ship, and many other brewers around the world have been gearing up for a big few weeks, as the Dry January movement that's going a month without alcohol has grown in recent years, but increasingly people are choosing to reduce their alcohol all year round.
World Health Organization data suggests alcohol consumption has been falling since about 2013 and, according to Global Drinks Industry Research Body IWSR, worldwide alcohol sales have been flat since 2019.
Martin Lodewijks is their president and managing director.
The trend for non-alk grew initially in Europe, in the US, 10, 15 years ago.
But I think over the last five years what's really changed is that you're now seeing really strong non-alk growth coming out of India, out of China, South America, Africa.
The growth in sales varies quite dramatically depending on the country.
And globally, non-alcoholic products are about 1% of the total industry.
So it's a small but growing market.
Good news for someone like Sonia Mitchell at Jump Ship Brewery.
I worked with a professional brewer on the first recipe.
We brewed a few different versions.
One was terrible, one was OK and one was brilliant, which kind of gave me the confidence to take it the next step, to scale commercially.
The non-alcoholic drinks market was pioneered by smaller craft producers.
But in recent years, the huge drinks companies have also got involved.
New Beef Feta 00, 0% alcohol.
Pernod Ricard launched alcohol-free beefy to gin.
And Diageo says its Guinness 0.0 saw double-digit growth in sales last year.
Martin Lodewijks again.
Moderation is extending.
So, instead of doing what I want to do for 11 months and then behaving myself for one, I'm going to sort of try and just sort of moderate my consumption more consistently over the course of the entire year.
Johnny Forsyth of Mintel, the global research agency, says his research shows campaigns such as Dry January are not the main reasons behind the rising growth in alcohol-free drink sales.
It's really the consumers being much more conscious about their health and also governments realising that drinking alcohol puts a lot of pressure on their health systems and investing a lot of money in anti-drinks advertising.
I quit drinking in 2018 and I quickly found out that in Accra there were a few places that I could go to to hang out, to socialise without alcohol.
John Asagonde is an entrepreneur and writer based in Accra in Ghana.
I run Eden Bar, the first non-alcoholic bar in Ghana and West Africa.
We craft our cocktails to mimic the sophistication and you know the taste and feel of a traditional cocktail.
Have you seen a change in kind of attitudes towards drinking?
Most definitely.
Of course I can take the credit to myself, because Accra has a population of over 3 million people and I'm just doing my own bit, my small conner.
Mintel's Johnny Forsyth thinks we have not seen the peak yet.
A market like Germany, our figures show that it accounts for 8.5% of all alcoholic beer sales.
In many other markets, that'll be just around 1%.
But what it does show is that this has got significantly more runway to go.
That was Johnny Forsyth there from Mintel.
He was talking to Imran Rahman-Jones.
Now, could European skies soon be a step closer to seeing Chinese-made passenger planes?
Europe's aviation safety regulator, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, is taking steps that could eventually allow aircraft built by China's state-backed planemaker COMAC, to operate in Europe.
After almost a decade of development, China's first large domestically produced passenger plane made its maiden voyage in May 2017, taking off from Shanghai's Pudong Airport and landing safely around 90 minutes later.
The BBC was there.
China wants the world to see its progress.
Safety is key to this project.
We haven't had any questions.
But they're not that keen to talk about it.
Safety is not a problem.
At least we're much better than the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320.
Our entire design is Chinese, but it doesn't mean everything is made by China.
Some of the parts are made by us.
The systems are purchased through global bidding.
This plane is being made in China.
It will no doubt sell very well in China.
But the big test is, will it be bought outside of China?
Will you one day, somewhere else in the world, be flying in this plane?
That was the BBC's Robin Brandt reporting.
Well, nearly a decade on, and Reuters and the South China Morning Post are reporting that test flights of Comac C919 have been carried out in Shanghai as part of the European safety certification process.
Let's find out how significant that is with John Strickland.
He works with airlines and aviation investors around the world.
So might we soon see these jets in skies above our heads here in Europe?
I don't think we will see them arriving in European skies anytime soon.
As we've heard, it's been a long journey so far, but it's an important step that the regulators are now looking at the aircraft, which could lead to them giving the green light, giving them the rubber stamp that they regard this aircraft as a safe aircraft to operate.
Because, while the company Comac starts with an advantage in as much as its home market is vast and given the government ownership structure, it's pretty well guaranteed of making substantial sales in China.
If it really does want to break out onto the world stage, then it has to demonstrate that it has a safe product.
And that means getting the approval of regulators like EASA in Europe and the FAA in the USA, if they're going to win airline customers from around the world who, of course, are very much buying Boeing, Airbus and indeed Embraer, the Brazilian aircraft.
So the European certification process.
We've heard that these people are in China now, maybe having a look at those jets.
What will it actually involve?
They will be doing, as we hear, undertaking test flights.
There'll be lots of technical processes that they have to go through in terms of the aircraft's performance, particularly when it's in adverse conditions.
How does an aircraft respond in different cases of failure? safety performance.
And that can be everything from the technical aspects of the components to looking at things like evacuation of the aircraft by passengers and crew.
And nearly all of the initial orders for the C919 were Chinese state-backed companies because other aviation specialists had concerns about the safety of them.
Where are we at now with that argument?
Do we know yet?
Or do we have to wait for these inspectors maybe to come back from their trip?
Oh, we definitely have to wait.
And I don't think we'll hear any pronouncements very quickly.
It is probably likely to lead to more questions by the regulators back to the manufacturers.
And they'll have to satisfy the regulators with their answers on those questions before any hint of certification takes place.
And, as I mentioned, EASA is important the European Air Safety Agency because it's regulated in the European market.
But it's also looked at by many other countries in the world as a lead safety regulator, as is the FAA from the USA as well.
So it's really important.
It also means it's really slow to actually get there and make that progress.
And just finally, just very quickly as well, because we're coming to the end of the programme.
Are you surprised that European regulators have gone over there to look at these jets right now?
Or is it just a sort of timely moment for them?
No, I'm not surprised.
I wouldn't think there'd be any great Russian to do it.
Certainly, I don't think the Chinese would want them to do it.
But it's still going to be decades before we see the aircraft coming into these parts of the world.
John Strickland, thank you very much for joining us today on World Business Report.
Thank you to you for listening.
From me and the team, until next time, thanks for listening.
If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed?
In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed.
But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it.
It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories.
I'm Helena Merriman and in a new BBC series I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story.
What did they miss the first time?
The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs.
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
