The Maersk Europe Market update dated June 2023, focuses on logistics systems in all sectors:
Ocean Update
June marks the start of summer peak period for cargo moving from Asia to Europe, looking to reach the continent ahead of China’s Golden Week national holiday and subsequent factory closures. To help ensure predictability, as well as inventory planning and forecasting for customers, our teams are working on increasing the flexibility of ocean and landside networks. Find out how flexibility can help build a buffer and direct cargo to your desired market at a later date.
In this period, being prepared is key for achieving a competitive advantage – giving you enough production lead time, buffering inventory planning and forecasting, and ensuring restock options for goods customers will demand later in the year.
This will allow customers to capture higher margins and a bigger market share by having the right seasonal merchandise available at the right time.
Appropriate planning can help avoid the additional costs that come with stock disruptions, reducing the need for shorter production cycles or simply losing the opportunity to sell.
To minimise disruptions in our customers’ forecasting, lead times, and stock-up process, our teams continue to adjust schedules to make them more resilient to seasonal fluctuations and flexible through both ocean and landside networks. According to Sea-Intelligence’s schedule reliability report, Maersk continues to be the most reliable carrier, and we expect the trend to continue as schedule adjustments take place in the coming weeks.
Key Ports Update
As we move into summer, European hub terminals are operating smoothly with stable productivity and density. After assessing capacity and demand, we expect to see a stable service to our customers, even with potential labour reductions during holiday season. In the past months, our teams have focused on bringing back a healthy performance on each service through adjusted proformas, which are expected to go live this month. Together with increased terminal productivity, the adjusted schedules will enable further reliability improvements.
Ahead of the summer peak season, some areas – such as the Adriatic – are seeing a significant uptake in import volumes, and our teams are working on finding solutions to ensure a smooth flow of cargo.
In Turkey, Port of Ambarli remains running despite facing congestions from inbound cargo. To help alleviate the situation, customers are kindly asked to pick up longstanding containers and import containers as soon as possible upon discharge. The tests to the Port of Iskenderun that ran in the past months were successful and we are looking to slowly start increasing inbound and outbound flow of cargo and clear the longstanding backlog from Port of Said.
For more information:
A.P. Moller - Maersk
www.maersk.com