Full to bursting

摘要

Ships sailing from the East Coast of South America (ECSA) to the East Coast of North America (ECNA) have been full for some time - and shippers are paying the price. John Walter from Delmar International in Canada told CI that the forwarder had expanded from using a core of three carriers from Brazil up to using five, in order to minimise space and equipment restraints. He elaborated: 'We were seeing signs of service problems in several countries in South America on the northbound tradelane. As well as expanding our carrier base, we're also exploring alternate routeing possibilities.' The northbound leg of the trade is dominant, where vessels have been fully utilised for some time, although the southbound leg is still weak. Although the trade usually peaks towards the end of the year, Vincent Clerc, director for South American services at Maersk Sealand, declared that vessels had been full since January, while another carrier stated that every sailing in 2004 had been at capacity. Table 2 shows an 8.2% increase in volume in Q1 2004 over the same period last year.