Maersk and ONE have reduced the space booking, and the pressure of lack of container will continue for at least another 6-8 weeks! May affect the Spring Festival delivery

France's CMA CGM is no longer the only carrier to suspend Asia-Europe bookings, as high rates, a severe shortage of containers, overloading of container ships leaving Asia and an overheating container market are prompting shipping lines to suspend space bookings.

Both Maersk and ONE said current market conditions had forced them to refuse booking requests and inquiries in some areas and to impose restrictions on ship movement until the New Year.

"The situation in Asia is tense.We have kept new bookings for short-term cargo to a minimum in the last few weeks of December and have had to close several flights because we have a large backlog of containers to move."Maersk replied in writing.

Maersk also said it would continue to accept long-term contract orders from customers as long as they had delivered the contracted amount in recent months.

Singapore-based ONE believes the industry is growing so fast that it can no longer accept goods transferred from other container companies.

"We can't accept new shipments from other shipping lines, but we can basically meet the needs of existing customers without having to cancel orders too much," ONE wrote.

Last week, CMA decided to simply stop accepting bookings from Asia to Europe for the next three weeks, and temporarily stop bookings from Asia to Northern Europe during the 49th, 50th and 51st weeks. The European route has basically finished booking this year.

But unprecedented demand for the route has prompted CMA to plan to increase capacity and deploy more ships on the route.

According to the latest announcement, CMA's capacity between Asia and Europe was up 6 per cent in the fourth quarter of this year compared with the same period last year.In addition, CMA will add a further 10 per cent to its current capacity early next year.

The additional capacity includes nine large LNG ships, each 23,000 TEU, to be deployed along the route.Three of them are already in service, CMA CGM wrote.The other two vessels will add 9,000 teU capacity and will leave China for France and the Netherlands in late December.

Cma said it was also committed to speeding up the return of empty containers to Asia to reduce delays at Asian and European ports.

A rebound that began in July has now reached its peak, with overloaded container ships leaving China and a general shortage of empty containers carrying large volumes of goods.The situation, which many consider unprecedented, is otherwise evident, with imports at some of America's biggest ports up 20% from the same period last year.

According to sea-Intelligence, a shipping analyst, the shortage of container equipment, which will continue until January, will require container-shipping companies to take action and will only be resolved through continued "aggressive repositioning strategies" and new container deliveries.

"Otherwise, the situation will get worse," the analyst firm wrote in its weekly note.'A shortage of containers, particularly in key Parts of Asia, is the biggest problem facing the container industry today,' the shipping analyst wrote.

Separately, Habben Jansen, CEO of shipping company Haberot, said the company had added about 250,000 TEU of container equipment in 2020 to meet strong demand, but still faced shortages in recent months."Congestion and increased traffic at the ports have exacerbated the problem, and I think in another six to eight weeks, the tension will ease."

A shortage of containers in Asia will weigh on supply chains for at least another six to eight weeks, meaning it will affect deliveries ahead of the Lunar New Year.

Congestion means that there are quite a few ship delays, which also results in weekly available capacity declining.Jansen called on shippers to provide more accurate information about their needs and to fulfill their container volume commitments to help solve the problem.Jansen says that in the past few months, pre-orders have risen by 80-90%.This means there is a growing gap between the number of orders received by operators and the number of final shipments.

He also urged customers to return containers as soon as possible to reduce turnaround time."Normally, the average use of a container in a year is five times, but this year it has dropped to 4.5 times, which means that 10 to 15 per cent of additional containers are needed to maintain normal operation.That's why we ask our customers to return the containers as soon as possible."Mr Jansen believes a shortage of containers has contributed to record east-West freight rates, but the surge is temporary and will fall when demand slows.

In this reminder, to book the cargo freight forwarders friends, must be determined early advance arrangements booking space.