Ocean carriers confirm strike delays as pessimism grows, says eeSea

Port of Vancouver. © Sstoll850 Dreamstime.com.

It seems that the 11th day of the strike has brought renewed confidence from the carriers in confirming schedule delays into long weeks, as well as two blanks; but there was still only one service-wide adjustment to speak of.

Yesterday, MSC announced that the Chinook service would temporarily be reverting to a Seattle-Portland-Vancouver rotation; confirming port swaps in advance for all Chinook vessels currently in the lineup.

On the one hand, these developments give our team what little improved forecasting visibility we can hope for in this scenario, and it also gives crews on the ground more definitive information for planning berth allotment when the situation is eventually resolved.

On the other hand, it’s reflective of the pessimism that is fuelling stakeholders across the globe and validates our fears that the impacts of this economic bottleneck will last well into the next few months.

Speaking of the bottleneck, we’ve had five more confirmed cases of planned port swaps, and three more confirmed diversions on the way since the start of the week. That brings the total since the start of the work stoppage to nine port swaps and five diversions.

Finally, there is one vessel we have received conflicting reports on since the start of the week, but we suspect it may indeed be another diversion in the making.

Vessel status summary

Confirmed (carrier and/or terminal reported) delays for the majority of vessels now between two and nine days, more and more ships in mid-July being pushed back into August and the long weeks.

We’ve still got a bunch up of four immediate vessel ETAs set for today, but that has significantly decreased since Monday’s total. Keeping in mind that none of us actually expect those vessels to berth today, they are simply those that are missing any actionable indicators for at the moment.

Noting that very few, if any, vessels are showing a noteworthy loss in speed as they cross the Pacific, we theorised that we could see some more slow-steaming as the strike continues, but it does not appear to be reflecting the expected congestion just yet. We are keeping an eye on the trajectories as well, to see if there are any last-minute port swaps/diversions we can get early signals on.

Vancouver
Currently at 90%
One in port (still MSC Shanghai V anchored in the inner harbour), nine waiting, eight steaming towards.

Rupert
Currently at 100%
Zero in port, four waiting, six steaming towards.