The 2023 Chinese New Year celebrations will take place from 21st January 2023 to 28th January 2023, at which time our friends and colleagues will welcome the Year of the Rabbit.

With these New Year’s Celebration closures happening shortly after our 2023 start to the year, the forecast is that we may not see the historical surge of bookings which usually creates an increased demand for space and equipment.  This increased demand usually drives an increase in freight costs, with the result that we may see a rather uneventful start to 2023. All going well, as one would say…

In the meantime, we are noticing ongoing delays affecting LCL shipments originating in China… Be it either from the origin Container Freight station, the cargo requiring re-packing at Singapore, or the core carrier deciding to drop the container at Singapore (for transhipment) even though the service from Port of Load to Port of Discharge is advertised as direct. All of the above will contribute to a delayed arrival at the destination…

Our recommendation will always be to alert us of your shipment, sooner rather than later, whether it is to assist with the full Ex-Works arrangements, or whether it’s to peruse the documents for clearance purposes.  To secure a booking at the origin, we’d need an indication of the weights, dimensions, and cargo description (Proforma invoice details) so that once the supplier has confirmed cargo readiness, we are ready to take immediate action.

The following factors affect the routing of LCL shipments to South Africa…

• Smaller shipments loading from outlying areas within the greater “Far East” region are being consolidated into one, South-Africa-bound container in Singapore…
• Blank sailings from the main ports of call on the Core service to South Africa. This is generally done in a bid to keep the demand on space thereby avoiding rate erosion
• Delays on the sailings to/from South Africa where the Core vessels from Far East origins will turn around at Singapore and head back to Far East origins, with the South-Africa-bound cargo waiting for transhipment onto the approaching vessel.

Further factors that could impact the eventual arrival of the goods at destination…

• Delays at the origin Container Freight Station (CFS) due to over-booking.  Groupage agents may be restricted in the number of containers that they load from origin and may need to roll cargo from one sailing to the next, due to space issues
• Delays with the discharged container arriving at the destination CFS at which time cargo can only be released once the unpack has been completed and reconciled.

For each of the above points raised, one could go into much finer detail but then you’d be reading for days…
Ultimately, although the above is not ideal for LCL shippers, and does not really give any solution to the lengthy transit times, but rather illustrates the reasons for delays. We are seeing a return to the “pre-covid” conditions which means we could look forward to improvements in the months to come.