Comment – Fuel, food and a fragile world

As I write this, I’m sitting with my packed bags, waiting for the taxi to run me back to the airport in Riga, Latvia.

Having attended an international technical congress, its struck me how small, and connected the world is. Firstly by bumping into a Danish guy I worked with 15 years ago, and we have both sidestepped in our respective roles, and yet find ourselves alongside each other, again.

Secondly all the menus are in Latvian, English and Russia, its a good 4 hour drive to the Russian border!

Fact of the day – in 2024 AirBaltic (think EasyJet but Latvian) used approx 200,000t aviation fuel, of which a mere 100t (4 lorries/5 flights worth) were Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). Now according to the popular press, SAF is the saviour of air travel, well it would be if AirBaltic (and all other airlines) could get their hands on any. So beware the talk of green air travel, electric and hydrogen planes are acknowledged as being a long way off by the industry. With SAF as that middle step (think Biodiesel and delicious smell of burnt chip fat) being some way off a significant part of the fuel mix.  If you cant sleep try this for a set of depressingly familiar facts.

This week all the talk has been of tariffs and how Trump passes on the tariff to the end customer, who, in the case of one specialist steel distributor in the US, then passes on the cost to their customer, who may be in Australia, Canada or the UK, grade of steel and order size dependent. So Trumps Tariffs are hurting the rest of us as well. Did you see the TACO debate?

Elsewhere the EU appears to be growing some teeth by allowing only farm produce grown to EU standards to come into the bloc. Perhaps something we could see happen over here?

Right, Vlad the taxi has turned up.

Have a good week.

Andy