News / You win some, you lose some: vessel calls at Felixstowe

The beleaguered UK container port of Felixstowe has regained the confidence of the 2M Alliance, earning the return of the direct call of its AE7/Condor loop this week.

Maersk’s 20,568 teu Monaco Maersk is scheduled to berth at Felixstowe’s Trinity Terminal at 10.30am on Wednesday, after a two day stay at anchor while the box port makes room for the ULCV.

“We have identified that overall capacity at the Felixstowe terminal has improved,” Maersk told customers. “We have confidence that the AE7 service call will prove valuable and reliable.”

The 2M partners, Maersk and MSC, dropped the loop in November, blaming “exceptional” berth wait times and “high yard density”.

At the time, Maersk described Felixstowe as the “most critical hub” in its North European network and said it featured very high on its “global red list” of congested ports.

The Danish carrier extensively used the German port of Wilhemshaven to overland Felixstowe imports and relay them back to the UK, while MSC concentrated the discharge of its Felixstowe containers at Antwerp.

However, a shortage of feeder vessels combined with ongoing extensive berthing delays on arrival back at Felixstowe resulted in lengthy delays to the imports.

One forwarder told The Loadstar it was taking an additional three weeks to get containers into the UK that had been loaded in China, as well as complaining of several instances of split shipments and a general lack of communication from the carriers on the status of his boxes.

Although the 2M had pencilled-in a return of the AE7/Condor for the end of March, it is understood that Maersk and MSC required the port to give assurances on its ability to accommodate the return of the service.

Moreover, in the light of port congestion in China, attributed to Covid lockdowns hobbling the supply chain, the alliances are focusing on recovering schedules by making fewer port calls in North Europe.

In fact, in December the 2M announced it would be consolidating the Felixstowe and Rotterdam calls of its AE1/Shogun and AE55/Griffen services, with the former loop concentrating on Rotterdam and the latter service calling at Felixstowe. It said it believed “this to be the best course of action to mitigate the full disruption across the network”.

Unexpectedly, it was a decision “welcomed” by the port of Felixstowe’s management, who said: “Combining both services into a single call will provide a faster, more efficient and more reliable service.”

The impact of the strategy by the 2M and the other two alliances, of concentrating bookings for a single North European port on fewer loops, is that terminals are seeing huge exchanges on vessel calls. In early March, Felixstowe reported a new record exchange for a single call of 27,961 teu from the 23,782 teu MSC Amelia, deployed on the 2M’s AE55/Griffin loop.

According to eeSea data, the loop now only calls at Felixstowe and Le Havre on its North Europe rotation.

However, it’s not all good news for Felixstowe, as it learned on Friday that the 2M had decided to blank the end-of-April westbound voyage of its AE6/Lion loop which was scheduled to call at the UK port.