CARRIERS have traditionally used blank sailings as a tactical tool to manage supply to demand, but with the current North America demand boom, ports have become congested with carriers struggling to meet their weekly vessel departure obligations, resulting in vessel delays, rolled schedules, and blank sailings.
The latest issue of Sea-Intelligence's Sunday Spotlight, which analysed the impact of these blank sailings on deployed capacity on major East/West trades, shows that blank sailings are currently having the largest impact on the Asia-North America West Coast trade land.
Blank sailings reached an extraordinary high peak in early 2020 due to the impact of the pandemic and the Chinese New Year rush.
'Since then, blank sailings dropped considerably, as demand picked up and capacity was ramped up. What then followed is what we call the congestion-induced blank sailings,' said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.
'With a blow-up in demand levels since the second-half of 2020, carriers struggled to deploy enough capacity. With ports overwhelmed and the ensuing congestion, carriers struggled to maintain weekly sailing schedules, and as a result, were forced to blank sailings.'
The trend has been increasing in recent weeks, with 28.4 per cent of the total Asia-North America West Coast capacity blanked in week 44. 'This cannot be attributed to Golden Week either, as it fell in week 39/40,' Mr Murphy said.
For the upcoming 12 weeks, the percentage of capacity blanked is scheduled to decline sharply, which is expected. This is because these blank sailings are not due to capacity management, but rather due to the carriers being forced to blank sailings, as a result of port congestion.
'This means that sailings will mostly not be blanked in advance, but will rather be the operational result of vessel congestion and delays, which cannot be known that well in advance, especially on a trade with a relatively short roundtrip time.'
SeaNews Turkey
The latest issue of Sea-Intelligence's Sunday Spotlight, which analysed the impact of these blank sailings on deployed capacity on major East/West trades, shows that blank sailings are currently having the largest impact on the Asia-North America West Coast trade land.
Blank sailings reached an extraordinary high peak in early 2020 due to the impact of the pandemic and the Chinese New Year rush.
'Since then, blank sailings dropped considerably, as demand picked up and capacity was ramped up. What then followed is what we call the congestion-induced blank sailings,' said Alan Murphy, CEO, Sea-Intelligence.
'With a blow-up in demand levels since the second-half of 2020, carriers struggled to deploy enough capacity. With ports overwhelmed and the ensuing congestion, carriers struggled to maintain weekly sailing schedules, and as a result, were forced to blank sailings.'
The trend has been increasing in recent weeks, with 28.4 per cent of the total Asia-North America West Coast capacity blanked in week 44. 'This cannot be attributed to Golden Week either, as it fell in week 39/40,' Mr Murphy said.
For the upcoming 12 weeks, the percentage of capacity blanked is scheduled to decline sharply, which is expected. This is because these blank sailings are not due to capacity management, but rather due to the carriers being forced to blank sailings, as a result of port congestion.
'This means that sailings will mostly not be blanked in advance, but will rather be the operational result of vessel congestion and delays, which cannot be known that well in advance, especially on a trade with a relatively short roundtrip time.'
SeaNews Turkey
