We have had relative stability over the last few months, the first in a very long time. I believe this relative stability is short lived and we should buckle back down for some more rate turbulence. 

Shanghai has fully re-opened and there is now a backlog to clear. Currently there are 260,000 TEU to be cleared out just as peak season starts. This will more notably effect Europe and the USA. 

USA continue to have chassis shortages, dwell delays and like all of us, driver, and staff shortages. Shipping lines have notified more LA omissions so more delays will be experienced. Europe are struggling with capacity as they hold containers bound for Russia due to the conflict in Ukraine. Along with the current strike action in UK it seems no port is safe from its own form of pain.

As an industry we are completely exhausted and over the short-term rate validities and the disappearance of long-term contracts. Online portals are hard work and have delivered nothing but lower levels of service and WAY more issues. Schedules are not reliable, and delays and changes are adding to the additional work operators already have.

Additionally, landside charges are also increasing regularly, empty parks remain congested and continue to experience issues and of course let’s not forget fuel increases!!

Stockwell’s have worked hard to try and put contingencies in place for all supply chain pain points. In response to less available contracts and less space we opened our booking office in April. Just this week we have expanded with new booking operations staff. This area of our business just focuses on space and rates. In just a short time we have seen a great amount of success with our booking office for clients. Our team plans, finds and secures the best and most suitable booking slot for our clients making sure it remains competitive. To get a container on a vessel is taking triple the amount of work (and time) so we will be separating freight bookings and customer service to ensure that they have time to continue to offer the best possible customer service to our clients. Our customers won’t notice the difference as our customer service team always remain their point of contact.

In summary, it’s been a year!! Its exhausting, challenging, frustrating and at times heart wrenching.   Shipping lines continue to have a monopoly on our market, can do what they want, when they want, without recourse or justification and forwarders take on all the fallout and additional charges.

It is good to see customers educating themselves to all of the issues and forming stronger partnerships with forwarders rather than blaming them, working transparently and closely ensures both parties needs are met and there is an understanding on the common goals.  

In closing don’t forget to start your Christmas ordering now, just in time shipping is for dummies and is always late and as we get closer to Christmas freight prices will increase.

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According to reports, the trio say they expect to save ¥50bn ($440m) in costs in the first fiscal year ending 31 March 2019m and thereafter ¥110bn a year.

The synergies will come from personnel consolidation, combining agencies and subsidiaries and a lowest-common-denominator-reduction strategy on port costs and service provider fees.

In their traditional New Year messages to staff today, the presidents of K Line, MOL and NYK, Eizo Murakami, Junichiro Ikeda and Tadaaki Naito, spoke of the advantages of the integration and a “turning point” for their companies.

Mr Murakami said the “spinning-off” of K Line’s container business would “deliver the advantages of expansion of scale”. He expected ONE would “achieve greater competitiveness by bringing to bear the best practices of the three companies”.

Mr Ikeda said the “new business venture” would be a “major turning point for MOL and mark a new beginning”. He added that the MOL group was “transforming itself into an enterprise capable of generating steady profits”.

Mr Naito advised his workforce that the container business integration, along with the acquisition of Yusen Logistics, were “major decisions that will shape the future of the NYK group”.

He said ONE, in which NYK has a 38% stake – compared with the 31% each held by K Line and MOL – would “aim to commence services from April” and that “the difficult work of bringing the company to life is continuing”.

After the merger, ONE will rank sixth in terms of global ranking by capacity with its combined 1.48m teu on 234 ships, comfortably above Evergreen’s 1.1m teu and just behind Hapag-Lloyd’s 1.56m teu. However, with a combined orderbook of some 187,000 teu, ONE could leapfrog Hapag-Lloyd, which has no ships on order.

Nevertheless, a primary function for the new ONE ship planners will be to reduce costs by cutting out duplicated sailings, and there is likely to be a number of charter ships off-hired in due course.

(Reference: https://theloadstar.co.uk/three-japanese-carriers-looking-forward-coming-together-one/)

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