According to foreign media, three major shipping alliances are preparing to cancel more than a third of their Asian sailings in the coming weeks to cope with a drop in export volumes.
The alliance’s blank navigation strategy to mitigate the impact of the pandemic lockdown will further extend delivery times, particularly to Northern Europe. Between weeks 17 and 23, THE Alliance will cancel 33 per cent of its Asian flights, Ocean Alliance will cancel 37 per cent and 2M Alliance will cancel 39 per cent, according to Supply Chain Platform.
Project44 said that after previously falling behind the other two alliances in blank sailing, “2M will cancel more sailings in the coming weeks than any other alliance”. In terms of port congestion, the data showed that the length of stay at The port of Shanghai for imports peaked at nearly 16 days at the end of April, while the length of stay at exports remained “relatively stable at around three days”.
Lead times for goods from Asia to Northern Europe continued to increase because of reduced export volumes and the resulting cancellations of sailings. Delivery times from China to Northern Europe and the UK have increased by 20 per cent and 27 per cent respectively in the past 12 months, the data show.
MSC said the voyage scheduled for early June by Mathilde Maersk (18,340Tteu) on its Silk route and Maersk’s AE10 Asia-Northern Europe route would be cancelled “due to the current challenging market conditions”.
In order to provide better visibility to our customers, after a careful review of the schedule, Maersk has decided to adjust the sailings from the following sailings to match the actual number of sailing weeks for the ships and services.
Hapag-lloyd has announced its departure from Shanghai, and its MD1, MD2 and MD3 routes from Asia to the Mediterranean will no longer call Shanghai port for the next five weeks.
