158 sailings around the Chinese New Year were cancelled

About a third of the alliance's Asia-to-Northern Europe and Mediterranean sailings have been cancelled between the first and sixth weeks of the New Year, but the reduction in effective capacity is much higher given the delays and the fact that some ships are taking a detour to the Cape of Good Hope on their return journey to save on Suez Canal fees and slow their return to Asia. Service was cancelled due to a series of cancellations and concentrated cancellations on certain sailings.

According to Alphaliner, the only remaining vessel of the 2M alliance deployed on the "AE1/Shogun" loop, the 15413TEU"Maersk Cambridge", which was scheduled to depart Ningbo on January 18, has now been cancelled." Barring continued cancellations, in principle the route should resume service on the 13,000 TEUs MSC Katie departing Ningbo on February 15," Alphaliner said. However, despite the withdrawal of AE1/Shogun and the cancellation of four consecutive trips on the AE55/Griffin loop, Maersk and Mediterranean Line are still struggling to match supply and demand.

2M alliance partners announced two more cancellations this month: the 19,462 TEU MSC Rifaya on the AE6/Lion route departing Ningbo on January 19; And Eugen Maersk, a 17816 TEUS on the AE7/Condor route departing Ningbo on January 24. In addition, many of the uncancelled sailings to Northern Europe arrived at their first port of discharge only 60 to 70 per cent full, eliminating the landside congestion that hampered the supply chain in the first half of last year. One UK port contact said: "The only problem we have at the moment is that the shippers are filling up their yards with empty containers because they don't need to send them back to Asia.

According to the latest data from Drewry, out of a total of 700 sailings on the main trans-Pacific, trans-Atlantic and Asian trade routes to Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, 158, or 23 per cent, were cancelled in the five-week period between Week 7 (January 16-22) and week 7 (February 13-19). During the period, 68 per cent of the outages occurred on eastbound trans-Pacific routes, 25 per cent on Asia-to-Northern Europe and the Mediterranean routes and 8 per cent on westbound trans-Atlantic trade routes.

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