Trade in state of change

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

THE many operational developments that have occurred in recent weeks in the North Europe/East Coast South America (ECSA) trade have played havoc with the annual assessment of performance, which is based on sailings from late April to mid-September.

Not only have new service loops been set up, but many adjustments have also been made to existing operations. Consequently, the results presented in the tables are rather more sparse than usual.
Generally speaking, this has been another reasonably good year from the operational point of view. Regional ports have been working quite well on the whole, despite the greater volumes of containers that they are handling, and the main problem for lines has actually been in Europe, where problems at Le Havre led to many ships by-passing the port in the 20-week survey window.

New operations that could not be monitored are the CMA CGM/Libra joint service, plus the two MSC loops that have sprung from its former single string.

MSC clearly had a problem keeping to its six-week schedule on the latter, and close scrutiny of its performance suggests that it suffered more than its fair share of delays at Santos, which badly affected its ‘days late’ average at both Santos and Buenos Aires. The new schedules have more slack, and on paper at least, should be an improvement.

The new CMA CGM/Maruba loop looks much tighter, with 14 calls on each 42-day round trip – including the longer sea voyage down to Buenos Aires and Montevideo in the Plate estuary – and this does appear to leave little scope for delays.

The revised CSAV/Libra/Maruba operation, in contrast, has just 10 calls, with an extra week allowed for the journey to and from Buenos Aires and Montevideo. On the shorter rotation followed during the survey window, monitoring was not possible due as the scheduled arrival dates at Santos were not clear.
However, there were a handful of late sailings from Europe, and the Santos call was pushed back in the rotation a few times. To help overcome the delays, a week was left blank in the schedule in late July, and ships were able to take advantage of this extra week to get back on track.

Maersk also skipped the first of the two scheduled calls at Santos on the “L” class service on several occasions, making it impossible to give an average at this port.  This meant that despite a good showing at its other base port, Montevideo, the overall result would not have been as impressive if data had been included for Santos.

This loop has since been revised, with a sixth ship added, leaving plenty of spare time in the schedule. This not only bodes well for its future performance at Montevideo, but has also allowed it to add ad hoc calls at other ports on the southbound voyage if required – an opportunity that Maersk has taken full advantage of in recent months.

Maersk’s SAMEX loop has also been restructured, and no longer calls at any Liner Analysis base ports, although the six-week rotation does look very generous given the ports that are included.

The ‘B’ loop of the Hamburg Süd/Aliança/CMA CGM/Hapag-Lloyd grouping – the ‘Brazil Express’ – was another operation that did not include any of the base ports southbound (although Santos is called for northbound cargoes). However, the average days behind the forward schedule at Paranaguá was 0.50, a reasonably good result.

The same lines’ River Plate Express (‘A’ loop) was affected by a couple of problems during the monitoring window. One was the grounding of Monte Pascoal on the approach to Buenos Aires in June, which resulted in berthing three days late and subsequently skipping Montevideo and Rio Grande to get back on schedule.

The other was a problem affecting the July sailing of Monte Rosa, the nature of which we were unable to clarify by the time of closing for press. This led to the omission of several calls on subsequent voyages, including two at Montevideo and one each at Buenos Aires and Tilbury.

Yet apart from these isolated incidents, this loop carried the torch for time-keeping, and this gives the operators of the ships on this loop, Hamburg Süd and Aliança, the top spot for schedule reliability.
Competition for the best transit times from the UK is severely restricted by the lack of direct services – in some cases, transhipping via a continental port may be faster, but this survey is limited to direct options.
As Grimaldi’s times are rather longer due to the diversion to the West African ports that feature in the southbound schedule, there are just two operations in the running for top spot – the Hamburg Süd/Aliança/[CMA CGM]/[Hapag-Lloyd] ‘A’ loop (RPX) and Maersk/[Safmarine] “L” class sling.
In both cases, ports were skipped during the monitoring period – with the Maersk-operated service skipping Thamesport on six occasions, and the Hamburg Süd-led one missing Tilbury and Buenos Aires once, and Montevideo three times.

The figures point to a definite edge for the “L” class loop to Montevideo, and for the RPX to Santos, but there is so little to choose between the two overall that both have been included as Star Performers.
It should however be clarified that CMA CGM no longer participates in the RPX – and neither of its two current operations includes a UK call – so its award is of historical interest only.