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Maersk has blanked four sailings, all on routes from Asia to Europe
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MSC has excluded three sailings on its Asia to Northern Europe network and one sailing on its Asia to the Mediterranean network
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THE Alliance members ONE and Hapag-Lloyd have made more than 20 cancellations for trans-Pacific sailings between February and March
Container shipping giants Maersk and Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) of 2M Alliance have announced cancelled sailings out of China around the Lunar New Year holiday in February to get back on schedule after port congestion have caused widespread delays.
Maersk said it has blanked four sailings, which were all on routes from Asia to Europe.
It said that in view of the Chinese New Year period, it will have four missed sailings to “free up these services for schedule recovery measures to respond to the recent, unprecedented market situation with severe port congestion and equipment limitations across global supply chains.”
The Danish transportation giant added: “This situation has been driven by a combination of rapidly increased demand and measures to fight the pandemic that led to slower supply chain operations across ports, inland depots, warehouses and inland transport modes.”
MSC, meanwhile, has excluded three sailings on its Asia to Northern Europe network “due to the slowdown in demand during the Chinese New Year and the current challenging market impacting port activities and generating congestion across the supply chain.”
MSC has also excluded one sailing on its Asia to the Mediterranean network.
“The changes will help us to match capacity with the expected weaker market demand for shipping services,” it said.
These announcements came on the heels of more than 20 cancellations by THE Alliance members One Network Express, or ONE, and Hapag-Lloyd for trans-Pacific sailings between February and March, said S&P Global Platts, a global provider of information, benchmark prices and analytics for the energy and commodities markets.
Hapag-Lloyd in an advisory to customers said ships have been waiting in line significantly longer than normal both in Asian and North American ports, leading to vessels being days and, in many cases, weeks behind their normally scheduled dates of call.
“We, therefore, have no choice but to implement a comprehensive schedule recovery plan to get vessels back in their intended positions. This will result in some services not having a sailing for one to two weeks.”
The cancellation of sailings around Lunar New Year, which begins February 12, has been a common practice as China and other Asian countries scaled back production around the holiday celebrations and export volumes declined.
Shipowners had already pre-planned 62 blank sailings around Lunar New Year last year before the coronavirus pandemic took hold in China.
But this year, instead of acting on weak demand for container capacity in Asia, shipping lines are hoping to utilize a modest lull in volumes around the season to reposition more empty containers in Asia before exports resume at their current strength, said Lars Jensen, CEO of consulting firm SeaIntelligence.
“Hence from a ‘normal’ perspective, blanking 21 sailings for THE Alliance is not particularly odd,” Jensen told S&P Global Platts. “Of course, this year the challenge is that these sailings could potentially have helped alleviate some of the bottlenecks faster.”
Photo by Dominik Lückmann on Unsplash
