VoxGroup Newsletter – 18^th June 2021

Delays around the world

We have seen many delays from different parts of the world and a lot of this has to do with the shipping lines manipulating space as well as the respositioning of empty containers to assist with the upcoming peak season.

As an interesting sidenote the USA is have substantial difficulties in the booking of exports with some lines not accepting bookings and others not have bookings available for up to 6 weeks. The exporters have gone to congress and a potential piece of legislation mandating that lines accept bookings for cargo is being discussed.
The shipping lines are refusing bookings and shipping empty containers back to Asia so they can turn the containers around quickly and continue to receive extremely high rates back to the US. The US, like Australia, import substantially more than they export and this has increased recently.

In relation to Yantian port the Chinese government has been involved with the issues at the port and have determined that the problems at Yantian port will be resolved within three weeks. Having said this it will still require vessels to call the port and at this point vessels are still omitting Yantian.
We are continuing to watch this scenario and hope to see substantial improvement in the next few weeks.

Industrial Action at the terminals

With the current week being a short week, which always creates some challenges, There has also seen industrial action at numerous east coast terminals.
In Brisbane one terminal has been closed all week and this has caused substantial delays for processing of vessels and availabilities within the Brisbane terminals.
The industrial action slated for Melbourne only partially went ahead and there wasn’t any substantial delays and in Sydney the current delay for vessels in approximately 4 days.

The knock on effect has meant vessels held in port longer than normal causing additional delays into other Australian ports.
Please continue to liaise with our staff and we will advise the most up to date detail in relation to arrivals, container availabilities and time slots.

Increase in rates and reduction in space

Whilst not quite peak season yet we are seeing the lack of space from a number of areas around the world getting worse. This means planning is the key and we need as much time as possible to make sure the bookings are in place early.

An extension of this is we are getting continuous notifications of General Rate Increases (GRI), Peak Season Surcharges starting to be implemented and a number of other fee and rate increases from the shipping lines. We are continuing to work towards the best schedule as advised by our clients and will provide the rate that suits this schedule.

Please stay in contact with our staff and we will assist in guiding you through these interesting times.

Take care and stay safe.