CONTAINER LINES in the China-Australia trade appear to be taking a measured approach to the traditional cancellation of voyages during Lunar New Year.
China’s Year of the Snake begins on 29 January, with LNY celebrations and holidays running until the Lantern Festival on 12 February.
Shipping lines ‘traditionally’ reduce liner services during this period, when factories are closed and staff on vacation, frequently hundreds of miles from their place of employment.
Once upon a time LNY signalled a precipitous fall in southbound freight rates, with capacity curtailed in an effort to keep a floor under prices but the recent years demand has remained strong, albeit reduced and rates have mostly remained well above poverty levels.
Carriers have doubtless been encouraged by the SCFI, which continued to rise into late December/early January, reaching USD 4220/FEU, the highest for December and only marginally shy of September, October and November peak season highs.
Accordingly, and presumably with positive forecasts in hand, all major services are signalling only single week blankings – with one exception: the A3 consortium of ANL, Cosco SL and OOCL will blank sailings on all three strings, with A3C cancelled for Weeks 6 and 7, A3N for Week 7, and A3S also for Weeks 6 & 7. The A3’s three loops overlap sufficiently to maintain coverage.
MSC is blanking one sailing on each of its three China Australia services, Wallaby, Panda and Koala, while Maersk/ONE has only one cancellation listed for Dragon/AUN. NAX, CAT and CA2, which have various combinations of members encompassing Evergreen, Yang Ming, Hapag-Lloyd, ONE, TS Lines, PIL, SeaLead, Sinolines and HMM, have each blanked one voyage.
On NZ services, J-Star/ANZL/CNS/NZJ and ANZEX have also cancelled one voyage.
These days carriers and consortia tend to use ‘blanking’ and ‘schedule slide’ interchangeably, with the former normally implying a particular vessel is idled for a specific scheduled voyage, whereas a schedule slide involves the entire fleet held back for a week.
