More Sailings May Be Cancelled before The End, and The Fourth Quarter will be Fatally Reduced

The major container hub ports in northern Europe are facing a significant reduction in calls from the alliance (from Asia), so the final quarter of the year is likely to face a significant drop in throughput.

Ocean carriers are being forced to significantly adjust weekly capacity from Asia to Europe and the U.S. against a backdrop of unusually weak demand, and the bleak outlook could lead to more cancellations in the coming months.

2M Alliance partners MSC and Maersk have announced that they will once again cancel the inaugural AE1/Shogun Asia-Northern Europe voyage from China, which was originally scheduled to sail from Ningbo Port on November 6, due to anticipated reduced demand. The 14336 TEU MSC Faith round.

According to eeSea, the loop will feature import calls at Zeebrugge and Rotterdam, loading and unloading calls at Bremerhaven and a second loading call at Rotterdam. Zeebrugge added a new port of call in June this year, and also added a new call to the port for the 2M AE6/Lion voyage. The two shipping companies said this will help alleviate the serious problems in Antwerp and Rotterdam. land congestion.

As a result, the Antwerp-Bruges Port Container Terminal is better able to manage the intensive ship arrivals and the extremely high volume of container exchanges. But container throughput in the first nine months of the year was still down 5% from the same period in 2021 to 10.2 million TEUs.

In addition, operators only started to slash capacity in Asia around the Golden Week holiday this month, so the impact of these reduced calls and throughput will only be reflected in the fourth-quarter figures.

The fact that the AE6/Lion loop has also been canceled in recent weeks has also seen empty sailings, so Zeebrugge's increased container volumes over the summer months may be offset, or significantly reduced, until demand recovers. Antwerp-Bruges chief executive Jacques Vandermeiren is pessimistic about the short-term outlook, saying the negative trend in the container shipping market is likely to continue until the end of the year.

The situation was similar in neighbouring Rotterdam, where container throughput at the hub fell by 4.4% to 11.5 million TEUs from January to September compared to the previous year.

Container traffic between Russia and Rotterdam is almost at a standstill due to sanctions," the port said, explaining that "in the past few years, about 8% of container traffic has been linked to Russia.The company added that an increase in the number of empty containers handled at port terminals made up for some of the loss in Russian trade.

According to the latest Drewry data, out of a total of 721 scheduled sailings on major trade routes across the Pacific, transatlantic and Asia to Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, between week 43 (24-30 October) to week 47 ( 82 sailings were cancelled during the five-week period (November 21-27), representing an 11% cancellation rate.

During this period, 56% of air travel will occur on the transpacific eastbound route, 23% on the Asia to Northern Europe and Mediterranean routes, and 21% on the transatlantic westbound trade route. Over the next five weeks, THE Alliance has announced 29 cancellations, followed by Ocean Alliance and 2M Alliance with 18 and 16 cancellations, respectively. During the same period, non-shipping alliances implemented 19 blank sailings.