Situation in the UK – Service suspensions and haulage issues

Attention: Shipping Manager

• Service suspensions

We have been advised that the majority of shipping lines have temporarily suspended their services from the UK to Australia and New Zealand due to severe port congestion, limited space and equipment, and serious trucking issues. Effectively at the moment, there are only two carriers accepting bookings to Australia and New Zealand, one offering direct service from London Gateway port and the other offering tranship service out of Felixstowe port. For this reason, we are facing unprecedented challenges with shipping from the UK as our options are extremely limited and space/equipment are fully booked out very quickly.

In addition, these two services are having various operational constraints, vessels are still experiencing berthing delays and port congestion in many terminals of their rotation. Consequently, these carriers will be omitting several ports in Europe on some of their sailings to recover schedule position, avoid delays and congestion.

• Haulage issues

 Further to our previous updates, the haulage sector in the UK is still facing many industry-specific challenges. Due to the serious shortage of HGV drivers, it will require a minimum of 3-weeks notice for haulage to cover FCL bookings. Delays remain at least 2 weeks for most collections, which extended container dwell times significantly. The situation is slightly better for LCL bookings, haulage will usually be covered within 5 working days.

Given the current situation, we would suggest that if you have any upcoming orders from this origin, please let us know about these well in advance so that arrangements can be made and bookings can be secured as soon as possible.

We will keep you updated with any further information.