News / Suspicious shippers urge Maersk rethink on new fuel surcharge plan

24/09/2018

Shippers have joined forwarders in condemning Maersk’s plan for new fuel surcharges to help recover the additional costs of low-sulphur marine fuel, to be introduced in January.

The new charges, on top of existing contract rates, are triggered on the average cost of fuel and a ‘trade factor’ that takes into account cargo flows, with lower charges for backhaul.

But shippers have pointed out that as the charge is per box, those shipping west with higher charges will end up paying for more ...

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Gary Ferrulli
September 24, 2018 at 4:34 pm
Start with the premise that the shippers have, that there are profitable routes.
In past 7 years carriers have made money once, 2017, and immediately returned to losses – because fuel went up well over 50% between the first quarter of 2017 and now, and the fuel surcharges weren’t introduced until July 2018 and excluded many
shippers who had “no gri, no surcharge” clauses in their contracts. So evidence says they have a bad premise to start with, the rest is usual “we don;t ever want an
increase to any of our ocean shipping charges”.

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