News / Maersk Line culls Chinese New Year sailings as forward bookings look weak

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Maersk Line has advised customers of nine blanked sailings over the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday period, which commences tomorrow, between Asia and Europe in its 2M vessel sharing alliance with MSC.

Starting from the end of this week with the cancellation of the Carsten Maersk sailing, which is deployed on 2M’s AE9/Condor service, the carrier said it would accommodate cargo previously booked on this vessel across a range of other 2M sailings – although for shippers wanting a Southampton call this will be subject to inducement only.

The changes are detailed in a customer advisory, and next week will see another five voyages skipped with ‘contingency’ arrangements made to cover cargo already booked, although some North European ports will again be served on an inducement basis.

Thereafter, week 10 will see a further two blanked sailings with another voided voyage planned for the following week and existing bookings again covered by a mixture of alternative voyages and inducement calls.

At the time of writing there was no evidence of similar customer advisory advice to shippers from Maersk’s 2M partner MSC, which prior to the formation of the alliance was not always prepared to declare its intentions on blanked sailings.

Meanwhile, the G6 partners have announced some voided sailings during CNY while so far The Loadstar has not seen any similar announcements from the Ocean Three or CKYHE alliances.

The CNY holiday officially lasts until 5 March and factories are shuttered as workers return home in the world’s largest human migration to enjoy family gatherings, although for some employees the holiday is shorter and production sometime resumed after a week.

In the past few years it has become the norm for carriers to blank sailings around the CNY period as demand for space dips substantially, but this comprehensive culling of sailings by the 2M alliance suggests there is also a weakness in forward bookings.

Neil Dekker, head of container research at Drewry, commented: “I do hear that the cargo spike just before CNY was not quite as pronounced as in previous years and shippers moved product in a wider time frame.

“There are small rolled pools of cargo left in Asia for shipment after CNY but again not as much as in previous years and so load factors will be a little light just after the holidays.”

Blanking sailings is now the only instrument carriers have in their toolchest to mitigate a downward pressure on spot freight rates, and given that rates were softening in the build-up to CNY there is a fear that with an abundance of empty slots, rates post-CNY would spiral out of control unless supply was reduced.

To make matters worse, Maersk and other carriers have announced early March general rate increases between Asia and North Europe that will have little or no chance of sticking if ships are less than 80% utilised.

The blanking of sailings at short notice is one of the biggest complaints about carriers heard by The Loadstar, and even the biggest forwarders such as Kuehne + Nagel report that supply chain planning can be thrown into chaos by the uncertainty of ‘contingency’ arrangements employed by shipping lines.

Moreover, the blanking of sailings from Asia to North Europe will add to further worries about the realities of schedule reliability.

According to Drewry’s latest Carrier Performance Insight report ship on-time reliability slumped to just 54% in January, and worryingly for shippers that lowly figure does not take into accounts ships that did not sail – despite the fact that cargo booked on a blanked sailing is often delivered much later.