Weekly analysis: 27 November 2020

Across the major trades: Transpacific, Transatlantic and Asia-North Europe & Med, 18 cancelled sailings have been announced between weeks 49 and 52. From a total of 488 scheduled sailings, this represents a 4% cancellation rate.

However, there are 22% less cancelled sailings in December this year than the previous one, in major East-West trade lanes.

As the surge of demand intensifies in North America with the approach of Christmas, the carriers are deviating capacity to the transpacific trade to take advantage, as much as possible, of the lucrative ocean freight rates, while the BCO’s are suffering from delays, shortage of equipment, congestions and additional extra charges generated by storage, demurrage and detention.

Drewry urges shippers to consider the capacity and lead time effects and to select sailings based on the latest data and on the incidence of cancellations by alliance, by week.