Carriers
Port congestion in Europe: Maersk and MSC fit their vessel schedules
Extra ordinairy waiting time
Maersk and MSC will adjust the sailing schedules of several Asia-Europe liner services that they operate jointly as the 2M alliance. This is due to ‘the extraordinary waiting time and congestion’ in Northern Europe, according to Maersk. MSC states that the changes are in response to ‘ongoing challenges of port congestion in Northern Europe’.
On Maersk’s AE6 service, known as the Lion service at MSC, the Rotterdam call will be omitted. The Rotterdam cargo normally booked on this service will instead be carried on the AE55 (Maersk)/Griffin (MSC) service. On the AE7/Condor service, a call at Le Havre will be omitted. The French containers will then be transferred to the AE6/Lion service. By limiting the number of calls in Europe, the shipping lines hope to reduce delays and disruptions. Several changes also apply on the Asian side; on the AE55/Griffin service, calls at Colombo and Singapore will be replaced by calls at Hong Kong and Yantian. The first sailing for which the changes apply was this past Monday: that of the ‘MSC Vandya’ from Shanghai.
One of the busiest ports
According to the Port Congestion Watch by the shipping data agency Linerlytica, Rotterdam is currently one of the busiest ports in the world, with eleven ships carrying 95,000 TEU waiting at anchor (as of last weekend). In Antwerp, it concerns five ships with a total of 20,000 TEU, and in Hamburg/Bremerhaven, 37,000 TEU are ‘at anchorage’, spread over five waiting ships. By far the most severely congested port according to the Port Congestion Watch is currently Shanghai/Ningbo, with one hundred ships at anchor, accounting for 425,000 idle TEU. In Singapore, which was the international congestion hotspot at the beginning of the summer, the situation has improved somewhat, but there are still around 100,000 TEU at anchor, comparable to Rotterdam.
Source: NT
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