Fuel savings at cost of speed

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

UNUSUALLY  for the Liner Analysis series, the most noteworthy element of the survey of performance is not the schedule reliability recorded for each operation, but the transit times.

This is because the policy of extending round-voyage times that has dominated the trade over the past year has resulted in a far less impressive array of times than was available at the same time last year.
Lines are saving on fuel costs through this ‘slow-steaming’ strategy, but shippers are paying through longer transit times – and in the Japan/South Korea trade, there are no exceptions.

To the main Japanese port range, UK shippers received a second slap in the face, as the removal of Southampton from the New World Alliance JEX, and of Kobe from the “K” Line/[Yangming] operation, has left just three rather than six UK/Japan port pairings in our transit time table.

The “K” Line/[Yangming] PAN/PM1 result covers only 10 weeks, but provided the fastest times to Tokyo over this period. If its faster predecessor, the JES/AE2, is taken into account for the first 10 weeks of the monitoring window, the two were easily the quickest from the UK to Japan over the full survey period (Yangming qualifies as a Star Performer alongside “K” Line as the two lines form part of a jointly-operated network).

The Grand Alliance did extend the rotation of their EU1 loop, but as Southampton was switched to the end of the European loading schedule, the times they offer from the UK to Japan have actually improved. Thus, while they were not the fastest in the weeks covered by our survey, they are now in pole position in this respect.

To South Korea, the direct service of the Grand Alliance from Southampton has been lost, leaving four in contention – all of which have been extended. However, the Maersk Line AE2 still has a significant edge over the opposition.

While transit times have lengthened, the longer round-voyage times should have improved schedule reliability, as they have given more time to accommodate the port delays that have badly affected many operations in recent years.

They have certainly helped in this respect, although in most cases the changes have taken place rather too late to benefit this survey. Moreover, the switch to a longer schedule has often caused a temporary deterioration, as ships have been slowed down on the eastbound voyage to allow the extra vessel to be phased in at the Asian end of the rotation.

This comment applies to two operations in particular – the Grand Alliance EU1 and UASC AEC1. Both suffered, as ships were a week behind the pro forma arrival dates on several weeks of the monitoring window, having dawdled on the eastbound voyage in order to shift their schedule position back by a week.

The relatively poor result of the usually-impressive UASC is also due partly to a dry-docking programme that involved the temporary removal of all of the 10 regular vessels on the AEC1 –in a couple of cases, the outgoing replacement ships were phased out at Singapore, thus skipping the Busan call.

There have been delays at several ports, in particular  Le Havre, which was skipped by several operators on various occasions, notably by “K” Line on the PAN/PM1. There were also some severe delays at Qingdao (due mainly to recurring heavy fog), affecting some services to Korea – in particular, the Grand Alliance EU4, which calls there after Busan.

The EU4 was also hit by a delay to the OOCL Qingdao on an eastbound voyage in August and the vessel eventually arrived 11 days late at Busan, having been overtaken by the following vessel in the schedule.
Despite the problems, there were commendable results on five of the 10 monitored operations – three to South Korea, and two to Japan.

To Busan, these included Maersk’s AE2 loop, which was hampered only by one ship arriving three days late after a delay at Salalah on the outbound voyage, and the Hanjin-operated FEX/Loop 3, which skipped the Busan call on one occasion when a sailing was terminated in Singapore.

This left the New World Alliance AEX in top position to South Korea, thanks to a faultless record in its 20 monitored sailings to Busan.

The grouping was not so fortunate to Japan, however, as one Japanese circuit had to be omitted in May due to the logistics of a new ship being phased in. Apart from this, all JEX sailings arrived at Tokyo on the scheduled dates, but one was four days late at Kobe when the Japanese rotation was altered.

Maersk also had to move Kobe to a later position in the schedule on one sailing of the AE8, but otherwise had a 100% record at both Kobe and Yokohama – enough to allow Maersk to retain the honours for schedule reliability to Japan.