Category: Sea

Ports invest for future

DP World has opened an 11.5 acre container park near Southampton, to increase storage capacity during the peak pre-Christmas season and work has begun on a fourth berth at London Gateway container port, to increase supply chain resilience and create more capacity for the world’s largest vessels... Read more

Contract negotiations signal carrier intent

Taking advantage of current market dynamics shipping lines are trying to move the biggest shippers - retailers and manufacturers - onto two-year terms for 2022, with some container carriers trying to negotiate even longer periods, of three or even four years. Contract rate spreads from base po... Read more

Skipped port calls add even more frustration and delays

With global supply chains continuing to struggle against pandemic-related congestion and disruption and traditional peak seasons being extended, or seemingly never ending, we are anticipating a pre-Chinese New Year rush in December/ January and would recommend planning supply chain... Read more

Container sea freight carrier reliability drops to an historical all-time low

Despite continuing global demand and freight rates breaking all records, vessel schedule reliability hit an all-time low in August and now ports have begun to turn away empty containers, due to the build-up of equipment that is delayed in its removal as a consequence. Although schedule reliabi... Read more

Liner haulage is effectively broken

Multiple issues are negatively impacting container haulage operations from ports across the UK, with inevitable financial and service impacts, which are likely to impact every importer of full containers. In the worst cases, if no action is taken, importers may face very significant additional ch... Read more

Air freight market more than challenging

Despite the massive challenges, our air freight team continue to find solutions for critical cargo and our Sea/Air services are invaluable for time-sensitive shipments. With options from across Asia, via a choice of hubs including Singapore, Colombo and Dubai, we offer the widest choice of servic... Read more

HGV crisis hidden for years

The HGV driver crisis, which has been gathering pace over the last two decades, has been largely hidden due, in no small part, to effective transport management by the freight forwarding community. But the situation has been exacerbated by Brexit and tax changes which encouraged 20 thousand Europ... Read more

Unrelenting pressure on global sea freight supply chains

The core problems impacting containerised shipping - the slow circulation of ships and containers, port disruption and the HGV crisis - are clearly worsening, as they diminish available capacity supply and continue to drive spot rates to record levels on pretty much every lane and every combinati... Read more

Global demand isn’t booming, but shipping rates are – and why is that?

Despite all the hype, Maersk has calculated that global container shipping demand is only up 2.7%, leading some analysts to assert that there is no COVID-era surge in global cargo demand, but there is a massive spike in supply chain disruption, which is the primary catalyst for driving rates... Read more

US landslide problems continue to grow, as shipping lines announce they are not accepting bookings requiring inland delivery

Container imports at the US’ ten largest ports increased 14.3% year-over-year in July and ocean freight supply chains, now in their second year of extreme dislocation, are threatened by shipping lines suspension of merchant haulage. The complete erosion of sailing schedule reliability, ships... Read more

Why container transit times matter

The circulation of container equipment and vessel schedule reliability continues to be a struggle, with our own analysis confirming that transit times from key origins increased by an average of 14 days and while some improvements have been made, we expect these to be undermined by the Yantian an... Read more

Global vessel congestion and schedule delays grows further after Ningbo closure

Just two weeks since the Ningbo-Zhoushan containers terminal closed after a worker tested positive for COVID-19 and container port congestion has spread across China and many other regions. Data from consultancy eeSea highlights how global container port congestion has grown over the past... Read more