General

As the National Day holiday approaches, all regions will usher in a week-long holiday-factories and suppliers will suspend production due to the holiday, and there will inevitably be a peak shipment period before the holiday, which will cause delays in most major routes. Recently, Maersk issued a reminder announcement to help its customers plan logistics and supply chain arrangements during the "Eleventh" period.

Maersk said that combined with recent port congestion in the Asia-Pacific region, this year's Golden Week may increase the impact of cross-industry and cross-regional maritime and inland transportation. Usually 3-4 weeks before the Golden Week holiday is the peak shipping period. Although most ports, terminals and customs will still operate normally during the "November" period, the carrier is likely to suspend shipping during this period. If you want to be in time Deliver goods and ensure that the goods can be delivered to the destination port in time. It is recommended that customers book containers as soon as possible and plan the delivery time in advance.

The 3 regions most affected by "Golden Week" are predicted

Maersk predicts that the three most severely affected regions during the Golden Week this year: North America, Asia-Pacific, and Northern Europe.

Maersk said that even if it does not participate in China's container trade, it may be affected by the Golden Week. This is closely related to the recent severe port congestion in the Asia-Pacific region and other parts of the world, and the imminent supply interruption, and may have a significant impact on upcoming shipments.

North America

Challenge: Strong demand continues to affect Asia-North America trade.

As the global demand for ships has reached an unprecedented level, all major trade routes are experiencing congestion, and the world seems to be experiencing a similar situation to the congestion that occurred in the South China Yantian Port in the past few months. However, the current empty container turnover rate is about 1.0% to 1.5%, which is a significant drop from 10.6% in the second quarter of 2020.

Asia Pacific

Challenge: Extreme weather (strong typhoon season) threatens the supply chain of China and neighboring countries.

Although the overwhelmed shipping industry is trying to recover from the epidemic, the region still faces another obstacle; as experts predict that there will be about 16 to 18 typhoons hitting the Northwest Pacific and South China Sea from August to December, ports in the Asia-Pacific region will inevitably suffer. Influence. At that time, the typhoon "Fireworks" caused congestion in ports such as Yantian, Ningbo and Shanghai, which caused ships to wait for three days.

Northern Europe

Challenge: Congestion in the Asia-Pacific region is also affecting European ports.

In the port of destination, especially in Antwerp, the waiting time for ships has been as long as 10 days. The latest congestion in Asia-Pacific and North America also inevitably affects major European ports. As the Golden Week approaches and it begins to have an impact on the Eurozone, major hub ports may become congested.

The shipping company began to prepare for the "Golden Week" plan of suspension and port jump

According to the latest news from Lowe's Daily: Shipping companies are considering launching a new round of blank sailings around China's "Eleventh Golden Week"!

The reason for arranging blank flights to suspend and jump to the port is actually to maintain the sea freight that has risen sharply in the past year!

According to Drewry’s weekly "voyage cancellation tracking", starting from August 9th, in the next four weeks, THE Alliance (Harbor-Lloyd, ONE, Yangming, HMM) announced the cancellation of 12 orders, followed by 2M (Maersk, MSC) and Ocean Alliance (CMA CGM, COSCO, Evergreen) canceled 4 and 2 orders respectively.

In the past few weeks, the record high freight rates of major routes across the Pacific Ocean and Asia to Europe have not shown any signs of retreat. The booking volume from Asia to the United States is still particularly strong, and the current congestion in Ningbo and Shanghai ports has aggravated the National Day holiday. In the formerly scarce space, large cargo owners and forwarding companies compete for the few space in shipping companies every day.

According to an insider of a shipping company, the shipping alliance has been discussing the launch of a new blank sailing plan in October, which means that it is impossible to lower the freight rate in the short term.

Traditionally, shipping companies will cut their capacity around the Golden Week holiday to ease the decline in freight rates during the weak winter and to welcome the next round of demand rise before the Chinese New Year holiday in February.

However, shipping companies this year will obviously consider adjusting their service network to make up for the shortcomings of this period, whether it is sailing in blanks, jumping into ports to restore shipping schedules, or adopting dry-dock ships.

So far, shipping companies have postponed all non-essential dry docks and persuaded their charter owners to do the same to deploy as much capacity as possible and take advantage of high freight rates.