General

The container shipping company announced that it will suspend four voyages during the Golden Week, which makes shippers who are still struggling to get their goods out of Asia feel "at a loss."

2M is the first shipping alliance to announce the suspension of operations during China's 11th Golden Week. There are scheduled cargoes on the cancelled flights, and export ships from Asia are still struggling to find capacity, which puts some shippers in trouble.

2M alliance partners Maersk (Maersk) and Mediterranean Shipping (MSC) have cancelled 4 Asia-Europe loop voyages originally scheduled for 39 weeks and 40 weeks, thereby reducing the shipping capacity of the route by approximately 70,000 TEU.

According to a report from MSC, 2M will cancel Griffin/AE55 and Lion/AE6 services in the last week of September, and Albatross/AE5 and Lion/AE6 services in the next week. MSC stated that the reason for this is "to improve the reliability of the shipping schedule."

A British freight forwarder who booked one of the flights in September said he was "shocked" by the action. He said: “We suddenly received a notice in the morning. In the past few hours, we have been trying to figure out what happened to our confirmed booking.” He said that there seemed to be “some confusion” regarding other alternatives. It is still waiting for a reply. He added: "This seems to surprise everyone, including the partners."

MSC stated in its advisory report that shippers can "book as usual because we are arranging contingency plans for alternative services."

It is normal for shipping companies to suspend shipping before and after the Golden Week holiday, because demand will traditionally ease after the main peak season. However, according to a source from a shipping company recently, “this year’s backlog of orders may keep ships until October”.

So far, Maersk has not officially confirmed the news, although some changes to the voyages were announced on the 13th to reflect the reduction in voyages due to port congestion and delays.

Maersk said: "Recently, there has been an unprecedented serious congestion in ports around the world, which has caused cumulative delays in many routes on the network from Asia to Northern Europe."

"This situation is caused by the rapid increase in demand and the measures taken in the port and supply chain to combat the epidemic. These accumulated delays are currently causing a gap in shipping schedules and leading to more than seven days between departures for multiple Asian flights. "The company added.

Maersk stated that it has decided to adjust the voyages of the 42nd week MSC Istanbul and the 43rd week MSC Bettina to match the actual departure week of the vessel and service.

In fact, on many routes,'slidings' have generally replaced "blankings". Due to the chain reaction of severe port congestion, demand is still high, and many carriers' operating departments believe that the reliability of shipping schedules is "impossible." "Guaranteed.

A few days ago, a non-vessel carrier issued a more ironic comment, saying that the cancellation of the order "is more to ensure a high level of immediate freight, rather than for the integrity of the shipping schedule." He said: “After some shipping companies said last week that they would stop raising freight rates, (other) shipping companies started to stop shipping again, which seems a bit strange.”