OL Circular on market conditions:

To all customers, carriers and friends of the OL Network

Transatlantic westbound

As already reported in our July circular, the availability of space on the carriers across the Atlantic is still an issue.

The situation is a little less tense than before, however, it is still not easy to get the space on the carriers that people want to book on.

Maersk does not even come up with service contract rates as allegedly the ships are so full over several months that they do not want to quote rates and not perform in the end. They concentrate on exporters and business owners and again leave the NVOCC behind.

West Coast direct carriers are fully booked up into October, while the transshipment carriers seem to have fewer problems to move cargo to US West Coast ports.

We hear MSC tries to adapt capacities as they are needed, however, the agencies get to their limits, processing all that business.

The GRI announced by Evergreen for August 15th was not executed, seems that they did not feel save enough to push the rates up in the middle of the vacation time.

The next GRIs are already coming up, October 1st will be the date. Please watch out on www.olgn.org for further news.

 

Ports are full at the East Coast also due to the deviated cargo from West Coast ports as the possible strike is still regarded to be a threat to the flow of cargo.

 

Another issue in the Transatlantic business is the oncarriage disaster in the USA. Carriers like APL reduced their service to rail ramp moves only, delays and problems are the standard situation.

The reasons for that have been discussed already, that discussion is ongoing, however solutions do not seem to be easy and will not come quickly.

The customer service quality at carrier’s agents is going down dramatically. Calls do not get returned, bookings are refused, cancelled, rolled etc.

As usual, there are still exemptions to this standard, but it is not a good idea to step on customers as times will certainly change again in the future.

 

Transatlantic Eastbound

We hear that space is not so much an issue and the rates come under pressure.

 

Stay tuned on www.olgn.org ….