Market News 

This is one of the biggest news on the market right now.  However, this breakup won’t happen in 2 years (they will need to give the market 2 years' notice).

MSC is currently the largest VCO on the market right now.  Currently, the market predicts that Maersk might team up with another carrier and form a new alliance (Might be ZIM and another big carrier like Evergreen or CMA).  The current major alliances we have are 2M Alliance, THE Alliance, and Ocean Alliance with 2M being the biggest.  So it is likely that we will see Masesk and MSC will pull one of the big carriers out of THE Alliance and Ocean Alliance to form a new alliance and it will be something we see in the near future and reshape the ocean shipping rate, space allocation and the over all ocean shipping industry. 

The Surge of Ocean Shipping is Finally Over

The ocean shipping rate is close to the pre-pandemic level.   Since late December the US West Coast rate has dropped less than $100 which indicates this might be the rate that the steamship liners would like to set at before contract negotiation.  However, even with the  the major rate and volume sliding in Q4, 2022 is still very high in volume movements and still consider a record year.  In 2023, there are few predictions from market ocean carriers that there are likely to have a spring back in February or March after the Lunar New Year break is over in Asia, however I am a little skeptical. 

Logistic Current Overview

1.       Los Angeles port has around 1-2 vessels waiting to be ported.  This is the lowest volume count since 2010 era.

2.       New York/New Jersey Port has around 3-10 ships waiting to berth, no congestion.

3.       Savannah has around 8 ships waiting to be docked

4.       Houston has roughly 10 ships waiting to dock.

5.       New Orleans also has around 20 ships waiting to be docked.

The recent  major news is on Los Angeles and Long Beach set to end the Dwelling Fee that they implement on October 2021.  Despise all the steamship liners giving us warning providing all their fine print on they won’t be responsible with this amount supposedly up to $1000 extra cost per container was never collected.    The port sends out a notice every Monday till they decided to cancel the fee.  This also reflects the current situation of the port of Long Beach and LA as the Port of LA was considering the measuring block for us to review the health of the US supply chain.  So the market shifted the cargo out of the port of LA with the ab5 law of the drayage company, ILWU, and PMA and major news headlines on the thievery and robbery on the rail. that might scare the shipper away.  Maybe the importer that we have worked with stated that they rather pay more to ship the goods to their final dentation instead of moving them via LA.

Slow down from inland transport via YVR

Canadian West Coast causing a minor slowdown in inland shipment concerns.

The winter storm has passed for around 2 weeks in Vancouver, but the container moving from Vancouver to the US inland points are starting to showing slow down on the Canadian Pacific Railway service.

Covid Surge in China

China is having a major Covid case surge although this has not affected major logistic forecast/outlook.

But we believe all the experienced logisticians should be back to prepare for a possible port slowdown in China like what we experienced in the US such as port worker calls in sick that will disrupt the supply chain. 

Logistic Current Overview

1.       Los Angeles port has around 8-10 vessels waiting to be ported.  A minor increase since Dec.

2.       New York/New Jersey Port has around 4 ships waiting to berth, no congestion.

3.       Savannah has around 15 ships waiting to be docked

4.       Houston has roughly a 10 ships waiting to dock with minor congestion.

5.       New Orleans also has around 30  ships waiting to be docked with minor congestion