News / As shipping's 'seasonal lull' remains anything but, rollovers continue to climb

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Container rollovers at the world’s leading transhipment ports began to climb again last month, according to new research from tracking data provider Ocean Insights.

After a global decline in rollovers during September, there were increasing numbers of shipments missing their scheduled loadings with almost every carrier.

“This is supposed to be container shipping’s seasonal lull after the summer peak season,” said Josh Brazil, chief operations officer at Ocean Insights.

“But on some tradelanes, freight rates are near record levels and ships are still departing Asia full.

“Container lines are trying their best to cope with critical box shortages in Asia, but this is putting more pressure on operations and freight rates. Carriers also no longer have the option of adding more vessels to boost capacity – almost the entire global fleet is active.

“I think what we are seeing is that the cargo pipeline has maxed-out ocean supply chain capacity, and this is being reflected in heightened rollover levels, which translates into more disruption for shippers and forwarders,” he added.

It will come as little surprise to shippers and forwarders that almost every container line saw rollovers increase, including 2M partners Maersk and MSC.

MSC’s rollover ratio was 22.9% in October, compared with 16.2% in September, while Maersk’s grew from 32.9% in September to 35.1% last month.

However, Maersk subsidiary Hamburg Süd saw its rollover ratio fall to 24.7% in October, from 29.1% in September.

THE Alliance lead member Hapag-Lloyd’s rollover ratio grew to 37.7% in October, up from 34.2% a month earlier, and Japanese carrier ONE saw its ratio rise to 39.3% from 38.9%. And amongst Ocean Alliance members, Cosco’s ratio increased to 26.4% from 23.7%, while Evergreen’s rose to 31.8% from 25.9%.

CMA CGM’s rollover ratio dropped from a substantial 40.6% and 45.8% recorded in September and August, respectively, to 31.4% last month.

Ocean Insights data show transhipment cargo rollovers increased to 31.1% at the world’s largest transhipment hub of Singapore, up from 30.2% in September and from 21.6% of cargo rolled in October 2019. There were more rollovers recorded at Ningbo and Tanjung Pelepas.

However, despite rollovers at transhipment ports globally increasing last month, some of the world’s leading box hubs reported an improvement in carrier adherence to schedules. Ocean Insights noted that Hong Kong, Shanghai, Dubai and Busan had all seen fewer rollovers during October.