At present, the three major shipping alliances cannot guarantee normal sailing schedules in the Asia-Nordic route service network, and operators need to add three ships on each loop to maintain weekly sailings. This is the conclusion of Alphaliner in its latest tradeline schedule integrity analysis, which looks at the completion of round-trip sailings between May 1 and May 15.

Ships on Asia-Europe routes returned to China on average 20 days later than scheduled during this period, up from an average of 17 days in February, according to the consultant. “Most of the time is wasted waiting for available berths at major Nordic ports,” Alphaliner said. “The high yard density and inland transport bottlenecks at Nordic container terminals are exacerbating port congestion,” the company added. It has been calculated that VLCCs currently deployed on the route take an average of 101 days to complete a full round-trip voyage, explaining: “This means that their next round-trip to China is on average 20 days later, forcing shipping The company canceled some voyages due to the lack of (replacement) ships.”

During this period, Alphaliner conducted a survey of 27 voyages to and from China, and the results showed that the schedule reliability of the Ocean Alliance flights was relatively high, with an average delay of 17 days, followed by the 2M Alliance flights with an average delay of 19 days. Shipping lines in THE alliance were the worst performers, with an average delay of 32 days. To illustrate the extent of delays in the route service network, Alphaliner tracked a 20170TEU container ship named “MOL Triumph” owned by ONE, which was serving the FE4 loop of THE Alliance and departed from Qingdao, China on February 16. According to its schedule, the ship is expected to arrive in Algeciras on March 25 and set sail from Northern Europe for Asia on April 7. However, the ship did not reach Algeciras until April 2, docked in Rotterdam from April 12 to 15, suffered severe delays in Antwerp from April 26 to May 3, and arrived in Hamburg on May 14 . “MOL Triumph” is finally expected to sail to Asia this week, 41 days later than originally planned.

“The time it takes to unload and load at the three largest container ports in Europe is 36 days from arrival in Rotterdam to departure from Hamburg,” Alphaliner said. The company strictly abides by the shipping schedule, and there is no port jumping.”
In its response to an Alphaliner survey, a shipping company blamed a shortage of port labor and a lack of shipping capacity for the increase in the dwell time of imported containers.

Alphaliner warns that “ships have to wait as large terminal containers are clogged.” The surge in Chinese exports after the end of the Covid-19 lockdown “could put unnecessary additional pressure on Nordic port and terminal systems again this summer” .