The situation in the Suez Canal has now been resolved, with the backlog having cleared and all vessels proceeding to their destinations. The impact on Noatum North America and its customers was thankfully minimal. THE Alliance (ONE, Hapag Lloyd) and OCEAN Alliance (CMA) will blank a number of sailings in order to regain schedule integrity (sailings detailed in the graph below). The 2M alliance (Maersk, MSC) has not made any formal announcements regarding void sailings, though it is anticipated they will blank some sailings to the U.S. East Coast in the coming weeks. These voids will impact any upcoming bookings to the USEC, unfortunately making the current space situation even tighter.

With up to two-week ship delays resulting from from the six-day closure of the Suez Canal and subsequent vessel bunching as ships arrive at hub ports in close succession, carriers have warned that getting containers repositioned back to Asia will be affected. It is anticipated that the availability of container equipment in Asian export hubs will decline sharply mid-April and well into May with 40-foot container equipment becoming the scarcest.

Void sailings as of Friday, April 9: