THE crisis embracing the global
container shipping industry looks set to worsen, and some experts do not
foresee any improvement until next year. At the moment, the number of void
sailings have surged from 45 to 120 in just three days while schedule
reliability has plummeted.
The sector is grappling with
demand from cargo buyers in the US and Europe collapsing at an alarming pace.
Hopes for a second-half V-shaped rebound are dwindling. Containers already
delivered to import terminals are piling up, prompting Mediterranean Shipping Company
(MSC) to introduce a stopgap storage plan, New York's FreightWaves reported.
According to the latest global
schedule reliability statistics compiled by Copenhagen-based
Sea-Intelligence, reliability in
February dropped to 65.1 per cent, "the lowest recorded global score since
Sea-Intelligence introduced the score in 2011," says CEO Alan Murphy.
Furthermore, the average delay
for late vessel arrivals rose to five days in February, the highest number seen
"outside of the US west coast labour dispute in early 2015".
Asked by FreightWaves whether
reliability would worsen, Mr Murphy replied: "Yes, I would expect schedule
reliability to be very poor in the months ahead and probably drop
further."
"On top of this, everyone is
focusing on retaining cash flow, including carriers, and even though bunker
[marine fuel] prices are incredibly low, and thus schedule recovery - speeding
up - is now much cheaper, I strongly doubt there is any willingness to blow
cash on marginally improving schedule reliability when it is already extremely
poor and boxes are piling up inland."
SeaIntelligence Consulting CEO
Lars Jensen also believes reliability is likely to deteriorate.
"I cannot say for certain
that it [reliability] will get worse," Mr Murphy conceded, noting that
"it is quite possible that the carriers may completely reschedule their
networks, and if their new schedules include sufficient buffers to handle the
coronavirus challenges, schedule reliability could technically improve -
although the 'new' product being sold, now with considerable buffer, would be
inferior to what would have been promised without such buffers.
"It could also be argued
that lower demand could in turn lead to higher schedule reliability, a pattern
we have seen in recent years in the Africa trades, as lower demand leads to
fewer boxes which leads to fewer vessels, which can mean less congestion where
congestion is a main cause of poor schedule reliability."
"That said," Mr Murphy
continued, "I think that hoping for such a silver lining is a little too
optimistic. I think congestion will increase in the coming months as importers
will be struggling to pick up their containers, even if there will be less of
them, and carriers may have to transship in unfamiliar ports and terminals.
"The massive amount of blank
sailings will lead to inland supply-chain disruptions, which will lead to
pileups and challenges in container repatriation, and thus to equipment
shortages," Mr Murphy added.
Mr Jensen said in an online post:
"The speed of the [demand] drop is bound to create significant problems
because you already have a large amount of cargo on the ships. When it arrives
at the destination, it arrives into a reality where it is not needed or wanted
by anyone."
The container pileup concern is
becoming so acute that MSC has just created the Suspension of Transit (SOT)
programme. To better accommodate containers shipped from Asia that are delayed
on the import side, it has set up special yard storage at six transshipment
hubs: Bremerhaven, Germany; Busan, South Korea; King Abdulla port, Saudi
Arabia; Lome, Togo; PSA International Panama, and Tekirdag Asyaport in Turkey.
The latest step-down comes on top
of a pronounced US import decline in the first quarter. According to SONAR data
on the seven-day moving average of the number of customs filings, US filings
for imports from China to all US ports are down 42 per cent year to date and
filings for imports (regardless of origin) to the port of Los Angeles are down
18 per cent.
Freightos chief marketing officer
Eytan Buchman pointed to a "scramble" by shippers to cancel orders.
He highlighted the fallout from
Amazon's mid-March decision to stop accepting nonessential goods to its
warehouses from third-party "Fulfiled by Amazon" (FBA) sellers.
"Shipments booked by FBA
sellers using the Freightos.com marketplace?reached a peak three weeks ago only
to sink by nearly 50 per cent last week after the change in Amazon's
policy," Mr Buchman said.
Mr Jensen offered a pessimistic
view on the timing of a rebound of containerised import demand. "My view
right now is that the rebound will not happen until 2021," he warned.
"Even if we are wildly
optimistic and assume all lockdowns are removed in two to three months, that
does not mean consumer confidence returns that fast. And more importantly,
importers will be wary about ramping up imports quickly after summer because of
the lingering worry about the second wave [of infections] late in 2020. If the
second wave goes OK, then we will see a very sharp rebound in 2021."
Source : HKSG.
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