OCEAN carriers have announced a new series of blanked sailing in October in their continuous "cautious" approach to capacity management.
Both
the 2M and THE alliances have withdrawn
headhaul capacity in weeks 40 to 44 to mitigate expected reduced demand due to
the Chinese Golden Week holiday, the first week of next month.
Alphaliner said that,
notwithstanding that September "will be a strong month for the
carriers", their decision to avoid overcapacity in October proved they had
"mastered the art of fine-tuning their capacity to match it with market
demand".
The
consultant added: "The disastrous effects of previous rate wars, and the
operational mess following the collapse of the Korean carrier Hanjin Shipping
in 2016, have not been forgotten.
"The
good results of the carriers are, of course, not only the result of disciplined
capacity management, which is new to the liner industry, but also largely
influenced by the fact that bunker prices have dropped considerably."
THE
Alliance will blank the sailing of its FE2 loop by the 19,870 TEU Al Zubara in
the first week of October and the second voyage of newbuild 23,820 TEU HMM
Rotterdam on the FE3, scheduled to sail from Asia in the week beginning October
5.
In
addition, October will see the continued blanking of THE Alliance's FE4 loop,
which will not be replaced by the 'extra loaders' deployed in August and this
month, reports UK's The Loadstar.
Meanwhile,
the 2M has reacted to the peak demand prior to the Golden Week holiday by
introducing ULCVs, such as the 19,437 TEU MSC Erica and the 18,340 TEU sister
ships Marchen Maersk and Maribo Maersk, on its seasonal Asia-Europe
AE55/Griffin 'sweeper' service, which was previously serviced by 14,000 TEU
tonnage, noted the consultant.
However,
during October, the first three sailings of the AE55/Griffin loop will be
blanked, in addition to the continued suspension of the AE2/Swan loop through
the month.
"The
Ocean Alliance has not formally announced a blanking scheme yet, but the latest
schedules show three skipped sailings in Asia-North Europe loops, whereas a
fourth sailing will be cancelled as the Evergreen-operated CES/NEU7 service
will only offer two departures in three weeks with a ten-day interval,"
said Alphaliner.
According
to eeSea data, at the peak of the Covid lockdown demand slump in May, carriers
withdrew 19 per cent of sailings from Asia on the transpacific and cancelled 28
per cent of their scheduled departures to Europe.
However,
despite criticism that they over-reacted with their blanking programmes,
carriers have not only reinstated many of the voided loops but added extra
loaders and sweeper services on the tradelanes.
Indeed,
according to an analysis by Sea-Intelligence, capacity deployed between Asia
and the US west coast is currently some 15 per cent higher than for the same
weeks of 2019.
Source : HKSG.
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