AP Moller-Maersk has resumed short-term contract shipments including spot bookings as congestion at the Suez Canal improves.
The Danish liner giant said the queue of vessels waiting to transit the Suez Canal has rapidly diminished and that daily sailings will soon be able to return to normal.
“For each day that passes we are getting a clearer picture of what this incident means for our customers,” Maersk said in a customer advisory.
The company said it was “continually assessing the delays” across the vessels, port and terminal backlogs to provide customers with the “best information”.
Maersk said it still expects the canal closure to impact schedules and port calls well into May, as vessels are brought back on to their fixed schedules.
“While the impact is still significant in certain areas, we have been successful with a number of mitigation efforts,” the company said without going into details.
Maersk said that Spot, its online booking platform for spot container shipments, had already resumed operations this week for some of the affected trades, but again gave no specifics.
Omitting the port of Jebel Ali
“Having near 50 vessels delayed for around a week due to the Suez blockage, either waiting at the Canal or being redirected by the South of Africa, full acceptance of short-term bookings are being determined by port and equipment availability, as well as the timelines of getting our services back on schedule,” it added.
Separately, Hapag-Lloyd said the 23,792-teu HMM Rotterdam (built 2020), which is operating on its Far East Loop 3 (FE3) service, would be omitting the port of Jebel Ali as part of its schedule recovery measures.
The German liner company said the ship was diverted via the Cape of Good Hope to avoid the blocked Suez Canal and prevent any further delay.
Cargo for Jebel Ali will now be discharged in Singapore and be shipped back to the United Arab Emirates aboard the 8,600-teu Budapest Express (built 2011), sailing from the city state on 6 May.
On Thursday, the Suez Canal Authority confirmed that a total of 740 vessels transited the Suez Canal in the nine days from 30 March to 7 April.
The Shoei Kisen Kaisha-owned 20,388-teu Ever Given (built 2018) was refloated on 29 March, ending a six-day blockage of the vital waterway.
On Thursday, a total of 61 vessels were scheduled to have passed through the canal — 23 in the southbound convoy and 38 in the opposite direction.
