North America update - May 3, 2024
eeSea’s newsletter is back and we will aim to publish a monthly release going forward. We hope that with some added internal resources in the coming months, we will be able to provide information on a greater depth of topics and regions.
As always, we encourage you to reply with questions, comments, and suggestions on how we can improve the quality of our reporting.
Overview
Our last report was released on Wednesday, March 13th (week 11). In the past 7 weeks we have witnessed two major events unfold on the global stage.
Most tragically, the lives of 6 workers were lost to the collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26th when it was struck by the vessel DALI in the early hours of the morning. Salvage operations are ongoing and four channels are currently open to vessels calling the port of Baltimore. Officials released a statement on Thursday announcing plans to rebuild the bridge, a four year project with an estimated cost of $1.7 billion or more.
Baltimore has understandably seen a slew of vessel omissions in the past several weeks, losing a total of 58 port calls and 315K TEU’s worth of nominal capacity since the accident. The port is likely to lose an additional 31 calls and 181K of capacity in May. Most carriers have communicated that they will begin accepting cargo to USBAL out of Asia at the end of May. These advisories are corroborated by voyage ETA’s currently observed in the long-term service schedules.
On April 13th, the high stakes capture of the Israeli-linked container ship MSC ARIES by Iran gave birth to fears of retaliatory attacks from both nations, including the possibility of additional vessel seizures along the Hormuz strait. There have been no significant impacts on Transpacific services or sailings as a result of these events that were not already felt by the heightened security concerns in the Suez Canal. However, additional signs of determination to avoid the area have been observed in MSC’s long-term schedules. Traffic through the Suez canal has remained at an average of 39 weekly transits over the past 2 months.
With the exception of the immediate shockwaves felt by these events, the Transpacific trade lane has seen little upheaval besides and is on track to receive healthy cargo volumes throughout our 12 week forecast.
Services
Most notably in large-scale changes, on March 28th Yang Ming announced plans for their TP service adjustments that will take place in 2025. This is of course an early harbinger of the upheaval that will occur when Maersk Line & Hapag Lloyd officially materialize their new partnership with the GEMINI alliance, effectively rewriting THE Alliance and 2M as we know them today. The eeSea team is hard at work putting these future service versions into play in our database, doubtless the first iterations of many changes to come. No information on specific vessel deployments is available yet for 2025.
Excepting future 2025 versions of 2M & THEA services, other notable changes that have taken place in the past several weeks include but are not limited to:
MSC - SANTANA : Dropped Suez Canal from its schedules in favor of the Cape of Good Hope, confirmed shortly after the MSC ARIES hijacking.
2M - NEUR-ECNA loop 3 : Port Veracruz is added just before Altamira, first call taking place on June 12th with the arrival of KARLSKRONA.
2M - MED-ECNA loop 5 : Baltimore calls dropped until the end of May.
OCEAN - AWE5 : Calls to Baltimore omitted through the end of June.
2M - NEUR-ECNA loop 2 : Vessels omitting Baltimore through late June, although some conflicting reports from MSC show calls resuming on May 22nd.
ML - AMEX : Vessels omitting Baltimore until late may, the MAERSK VALLVIK was reported to be returning on May 5th last week but has since omitted USBAL from the short-term schedule. The next vessel expected to call will be NELLE MAERSK, current ETA June 13th.
GRMLDI - NAWAS : A small Asia-Europe service that is omitting Baltimore until mid-late May.
ZIM - CFX : Service resumed in mid-April and the first call to the US East Coast will take place in NYC by the PACIFIC TRADER on May 03, followed by Halifax on May 06.
Evergreen Marine Corp is reportedly replacing their TPN (OCEAN - PNW3), TPA (OCEAN - MEA4 & PSW8), & HTW (OCEAN - PSW7) services to Tacoma with the new EMC - ANP. These three services are being actively reviewed by our operations analysts for confirmation of possible suspension dates or changes to VSA partnership.
Blank Sailings
Despite widespread concerns that falling spot rates would once again yield a surge of blanks out of Asia, volumes have held steady across the US West Coast gateway. With events in the Middle East remaining touch-and-go and many Asia-Europe services obliged to continue their diversions around the Cape of Good Hope, the need to balance capacity through the Asia-Americas trade remains strong.
The US East Coast expects 24 blanks between the current week and w24, with OCEAN - AWE8 topping the charts with an unalarming 2 blanks in total. Even fewer blank sailinga are expected along the US West Coast with a total of 10 expected over the next 6 weeks, 2 of which will be on the OCEAN - PNW4.
In Canada, Vancouver & Prince Rupert will be seeing 9 blanked sailings through w24, 2 of which belong to the ZIM - ZPX. On the East Coast there are just 3 blanks, with 2 concentrated on THEA - EC5, the most high-profile TP service to take consistent hits from the Suez Canal conflict.
Congestion
Congestion has remained relatively stable on the US West Coast gateway. Los Angeles & Long Beach remain at 10% or below from w12 through w18, Seattle & Tacoma are also experiencing minimal to zero wait time with both averaging at 8% or below over the past few weeks. Oakland started w11 at 20% and continues along this trend but OITC has reported that 2 cranes are non-operational at this time. A continuation of these moderate congestion levels may be expected in the weeks ahead for Oakland.
On the East Coast, Savannah’s wait times have been on an upward trend since w12, reaching 58% in w17 - its highest since the start of 2024. While average berth stays remain aligned with the proforma duration of 1.2 days, less than 20% of vessels arrive on time and many are reportedly waiting 48 hrs or more in anchorage before receiving a berth. This recent increase in wait times mirrors an uptick in traffic: w11 through w15 saw an average of 29 weekly arrivals but w17 through w18 held an average of 44.
Our team plans to release the next iteration of our Schedule Reliability Scorecard in the near future, please keep an eye on our Linkedin posts for updates.
