Prime Freight’s summary of a January 2021 report by The Loadstar. Read the original for the full story.
In January 2021 The Loadstar reported that blank sailings were giving way to new scheduling headaches for shippers: sliding schedules, ad-hoc port omissions and short-notice network changes.
2M partners Maersk and MSC announced structural changes to their transpacific services, citing demand volatility and pandemic-related congestion; these mainly involved port omissions in China and port swaps on the US East Coast. Carriers had added ships to the transpacific to meet a surge in demand, but around 30 vessels were waiting for berths at Los Angeles and Long Beach, hurting reliability. Hapag-Lloyd added a seven-day buffer to one Asia–South America East Coast loop for 13 weeks.
December congestion at UK ports had also pushed UK cargo to Rotterdam, Antwerp, Zeebrugge and Bremerhaven, causing further delays. A carrier source expected Asia–North Europe services might eventually make fewer direct UK calls and publish longer transit times, though some partners were reluctant to commit before seeing post-Chinese New Year demand. A maritime economist expected flexible port-call patterns could become a long-term feature.
What it meant for shippers
Port omissions and sliding schedules make the published timetable only a starting point. Shippers needed to confirm the actual discharge port and arrival date for each booking and allow for on-carriage if cargo was landed elsewhere.