Driven by increased demand, overworked and overcrowded supply chains continue to prevent ports from achieving their full potential. One conclusion of the overcrowded ports resulted in delays across several services on the Asia to Med network. The continued delays are furthering the schedule gaps accumulated in several Asian ports, resulting in several Asian departures being spread apart by more than four days.
MSC released a statement earlier today addressing these issues, saying they are “planning to adjust the sailing program on its Asia to Mediterranean network to match actual departure dates from Asia better.” The shipping company said that they were changing the scheduling of MSC OSCAR to “provide better schedule reliability.”
Maersk has responded to the abrupt backup by releasing a statement reinforcing their vetted name, “Maersk has decided to adjust the voyages numbers starting from below sailings to match with corresponding actual departure weeks of the vessels and services.” After laying the foundation of contentedness with Maersk, the shipping company soon mentioned the seemingly abrupt schedule change. However, not without leaving room for reasonable doubt that the MSC OSCAR is not the only ship to have a schedule change. Maersk had MSC OSCAR under the category of “first impacted vessel,” leaning into the possibility of more havoc to be unleashed in the upcoming weeks, if not days, on the Asian ports.
The MSC OSCAR was said to have delays longer than the now normalized seven days. However, changing the schedule of just one vessel cant diminish the widespread delays shown all through Asia to Med network. As delays continue further, it seems as though more and more vessels will be forced to face schedule updates.
In their release, with the possibility of more re-scheduling on the horizon, Maersk reassured their customers that they were doing everything in their power to combat the delays, including adjusting trip numbers beginning with the below sailings to correspond to the vessels’ and services’ real departure weeks.
Both MSC and Maersk supplied their customers with a link for more information if they should please understand the issue at hand better. Maersk thanked its customers for continuously cooperating and understanding problems that may arise in the shipping industry.
