News / Revised carrier schedules bedding-in, say shippers, but they see trouble ahead

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Amid continuing attacks on commercial shipping by Houthi rebels, scheduling issues caused by re-routing of services away from the Suez Canal and around the Cape of Good Hope (CGH) have begun to stabilise. 

According to UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), a UK-owned ship was fired on at just after midnight yesterday, just west of Yemen’s Hodeidah port. 

UKMTO said: “The projectile passed over the deck and caused damage to the bridge windows. The vessel and crew are safe. Vessel proceeding on planned passage.” 

With CMA CGM the latest and last of the 10 major carriers to confirm it will be avoiding the Red Sea and Suez Canal, forwarder Flexport noted that as carriers adjust their schedules, networks were starting to normalise. 

Director of Global Shippers Forum James Hookham told The Loadstar Podcast: “There was a bit of a lull in ports while the diversions were in place, so there were a lot of ships that didn’t turn up when they were expected to, but they are on their way and they’re starting to arrive. 

“We should see stability in schedules and arrivals now – albeit it will take longer for goods to get here – but they should bed down into the new arrangements and start to get back to the regular pattern shippers are expecting.”  

However, Mr Hookham also warned: “The problem will come when the Suez Canal reopens, because suddenly, you’ll have a load of vessels that will take two weeks shorter to reach Europe, and they’ll be turning up at the same time as all those diverted vessels, so that’s when it will get interesting – that transition back into normal use.” 

This may be a more distant concern, as head of ocean freight for EMEA at Flexport Trine Nelson noted: “Carriers are now saying they are transiting round the Cape ‘until further notice’, rather than before when they were offering weekly updates. 

“This really highlights how this will be a much longer-term impact,” she said. 

Liner shipping analyst Alphaliner reported today that, due to the need for increased capacity to account for delayed transit times, idling has reduced and there are no longer any ships of more than 12,500 teu at anchor. 

It said: “With the combined impact of the ongoing safety issues in parts of the Red Sea leading to diversions via the much longer CGH, and the export rush ahead of the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday, the idle containership fleet, which was already quite low, continued to shrink.” 

With CNY beginning this weekend, Ms Nelson concluded: “The year of the dragon is said to be the luckiest in the Chinese zodiac, so considering everything that has gone down over the past few months, let’s hope the year of the dragon gives us some luck in logistics.” 

But Alphaliner advised stakeholders to prepare for more volatility after the CNY celebrations. It said: “With carriers starting to redesign their networks to incorporate the diversion via Africa, together with the expected skipped sailings in the slack period after CNY and the arrival of many large newbuildings, the situation of tight tonnage supply might change in the coming months.”