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 China National holiday this month, so the impact of these reduced calls and throughput will only be reflected in the fourth-quarter figures.