Just a few months after electing to swap its UK hub from Felixstowe to London Gateway, Maersk is set to temporarily shift back the UK port call of its transatlantic TA5 service.
“Due to the current operational situation in London, [the] TA5 London Gateway call will be changing to Felixstowe Terminal, 22 May onwards. There will be no changes to the service rotation,” Maersk told customers today.
The carrier advised that the next two UK calls on the service, which is operated in cooperation with Hapag-Lloyd, but outside the Gemini Cooperation, will be at Felixstowe, with the 2,750 teu Cape Corfu on 22 May and the 29 May arrival of the 2,600 teu Puerto Limon Express.
Kuehne + Nagle’s SeaExplorer platform noted two days ago that yard utilisation at London Gateway had increased to 83%, but added that “severe berth congestion is being addressed with productivity plans. Additional labour from Southampton is in place, and block stacking is operational. Extra yard space is allocated for rail feed stacks, and rail failures are reducing.”
The TA5 is just the latest in a series of vessel repositionings in response to emerging chronic port congestion across Northern Europe’s ports, with problems in one gateway rippling to others in the region, as Mark Rosenberg, chief commercial officer at DP World Europe, explained.
“A range of factors are currently affecting shipping and cargo flows through container ports and terminals across Europe.
Recent changes to shipping alliances in the market are a major cause. DP World is working hard to support our customers through this period, utilising our full network of ports, terminals and end to end supply chain services,” he said.
For example, according to the eeSea liner database, there are 12 vessels at various anchorages around the Channel, waiting to proceed to Antwerp, which has been suffering congestion since Belgian dockers held a one-day strike on 27 April.
And the delays are beginning to have serious ripple effects on vessel scheduling. The 6,350 teu Brighton, operated by ONE and deployed on the transatlantic Ocean Alliance AT2 service, has been at anchor outside Le Havre since yesterday, rather than going straight to Antwerp, where it is now scheduled to arrive on 18 May, 10 days late.
In another example, the 4,100 teu MSC Vidisha R, deployed on MSC’s Ecuador-North Europe-US service, was originally due to dock at Antwerp on 5 May, but its ETA is now showing as 18 May.
Kuehne + Nagel said other North Europe hubs – principally Rotterdam and Hamburg – were also seeing severely disrupted operations, with Hamburg’s container yards currently at 85% utilisation and expected to rise over 90% in the coming days, and up to eight hours delay at its rail terminals.
And things could become significantly worse in the summer, as the port is due to close its rail terminals between 4 and 8 July for construction work on a nearby motorway.
Meanwhile, in Rotterdam, labour shortages at Hutchison’s Delta II terminal have meant feeder vessels typically facing two-days’ waiting, and high inter-terminal transfer times have also hindered vessel turnaround times.
In a separate development, ONE today announced the launch of three new services between Rotterdam and UK east coast ports.
Loop 1 will connect Rotterdam and the port of Tyne on a pendulum basis; Loop 2 will connect three Rotterdam terminals – ECT, Rotterdam World Gateway and Rotterdam Short Sea Terminals – with Teesport and Grangemouth; and Loop 3 will run between Rotterdam and Immingham.
The first sailing of Loop 2 was scheduled to depart Rotterdam today.
