With Hapag-Lloyd — and by extension its partners in THE Alliance — advising customers of 21 de facto canceled sailings in February in the eastbound trans-Pacific due to schedule disruptions, importers should anticipate even tighter capacity in the coming months.
Unlike blank sailings made by carriers in response to weak cargo volumes, these missed voyages are structural in nature. When a vessel has been delayed for a week or longer at a given port, the carrier will then institute a “structural” blank for that ship’s next sailing to rectify the service schedule.
Ostergaard said Hapag-Lloyd’s changes to its service schedule are necessitated by vessel bunching at congested ports due to near-record cargo volumes in the Asia-North America trade. Import volumes exploded when the North American economy began to recover last summer following the lifting of initial COVID-19 lockdowns. Eastbound liner reliability from Asia to both US coasts was under 30 percent for both coasts in December, according to Sea-Intelligence Maritime Analysis.
The worst congestion in the US has been at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, with numerous container ships delayed a week or longer, according to the Marine Exchange of Southern California. Ostergaard also cited Oakland and Vancouver as being West Coast gateways that have experienced late vessel arrivals and congestion.
Carriers may need further blank sailings
The current round of de facto blank sailings could be the first of several “corrections” that Hapag-Lloyd, and possibly other carriers and vessel-sharing alliances, may have to make in the coming months. “This will be a recurring theme,” Ostergaard said.
Lars Jensen, CEO of SeaIntelligence Consulting, told JOC.com Tuesday that although no other carrier or vessel-sharing alliance has announced structural blank sailings, he anticipates more will be coming.
A spokesperson for ONE in Singapore told JOC.com that schedule delays have become so bad that the carrier is considering whether to void sailings during the Lunar New Year so it can reposition ships to restore schedule reliability.
“Heavy schedule delays are being caused by global terminal congestion resulting from low productivity and lack of labor due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said. “Vessel schedules on each service are also heavily affected by the congestion and the schedule delay may result in a lack of vessels to meet a full service after Chinese New Year.”
Christian Sur, executive vice president of sales and marketing at non-vessel-operating common carrier (NVO) Unique Logistics International, said he received Hapag-Lloyd’s customer advisory late last week, and he would not be surprised if the 2M and Ocean alliances issue advisories as well.
“They have similar issues,” Sur said.
Import volumes may not slow appreciably
Sur added that US imports from Asia remain exceptionally strong for this time of year, and with a backlog of merchandise building at Asian factories in the run-up to the Lunar New Year holidays beginning Feb. 12, vessels will likely continue to be overbooked at Asian load ports through the first quarter.
Vessel disruptions due to blank sailings could lead to a situation that ports such as Los Angeles and Long Beach faced last March when empty containers congested the terminals, import distribution centers, and truck yards in Southern California, and carriers were not providing enough westbound trans-Pacific capacity to return the empties to Asia.
Carriers at the time deployed “sweeper” ships to Los Angeles-Long Beach to vacate the empties, but Ostergaard said that strategy may not work this time. Carriers have few idle ships in the fleet, and even if they can secure some, the sweeper ships will face continued congestion at the ports.
“Even the sweeper ships can’t run on schedule,” he said.
With reports from Asia indicating some factories are planning to remain open through the Lunar New Year, US import volumes may not drop significantly as they normally do during the holidays, so vessel space at Asian load ports is likely to remain tight for some time, Sur said.