'Plan ahead', says Maersk, unveiling plans to skip ports as demand grows
29 September 2021
By Mike Wackett 27/09/2021
Maersk says it expects to see “early signs of a pre-Chinese New Year rush in December”, and is advising customers to plan their supply chains “well ahead”.
It also notes that inventory levels in Europe and the US are at their lowest on record and that, even when retail demand declines, “we will see cargo volumes continue to remain strong” as inventory levels are rebuilt.
The carrier said it was taking steps to “rationalise” its service coverage and reduce the number of port calls, in an attempt to speed-up schedules and improve reliability.
“Continued strong demand, coupled with network disruptions has hammered our schedule reliability,” said Maersk in an Asia Pacific market update today. “We advise customers to plan their supply chains well ahead, particularly for the upcoming holiday rush.”
sted schedules promptly.
“It’s not ideal, but we can deal with this if we have enough notice so that we can let everybody know, but in the past not even the local port offices seemed to get told when a ship was skipping a UK port call,” he said.
Meanwhile, on the transpacific, Maersk said it expected the strong demand to continue for the whole of Q4. However, with berthing delays at North American ports getting longer, it said it expected “the loss of capacity from missed sailings to continue”.
“We have deployed gap loaders and launched the new TP-X and TP20 services on the US west and east coasts to bolster capacity and improve schedule reliability,” said the carrier.
But there was some good news for Asia to Latin America shippers, with the outlook through to China’s Golden Week holiday next week remaining “positive”.
The carrier however recommended customers on the tradelane to “divert cargo to north or east China ports if possible”.
News Source : https://theloadstar.com/plan-ahead-says-maersk-unveiling-plans-to-skip-ports-as-demand-grows/
