| Dear Valued Customer,
While we still expect the Suez Canal closure to impact schedules and port calls well into May, as vessels are brought back on their fixed schedules, our people are working continuously to mitigate the felt impact for our customers and to ensure reliability in our operations.
Giving you the best ability to manage your supply chain is of the utmost priority to us and we are working to give you the tools and information you need to do so. Your concern is our concern and we regret the inconvenience this incident may cause to your business in a time where certain industries are already stretched due to the pandemic. The new normal is still being determined, but we expect the situation to remain tight into the third quarter. Ports and infrastructures remain bottlenecks and because of this, ocean and inland delays are likely to continue in and out from high demand locations. Our teams are working around the clock to alleviate pressure points, so do not hesitate to reach out for an individual assessment as of what this means for you.
The integrity of our products and customer promise is paramount to serving all our customers and we must ensure that what we sell to our customers, we can deliver. We are deploying all our current capacity to lessen the impact on our customers' supply chains. As we get more visibility across the supply chain, we are responsibly accepting short-term bookings across the board. Please note that full acceptance of short-term bookings is being determined by port and equipment availability, as well as the timeliness of getting our services back on schedule. As there will be local variations depending on the load port in question, we encourage customers to check short-term availability online via Spot on Maersk.com or via your local Maersk agent.
Equipment supply and the repositioning of empties remains a concern, but to further lessen the impact on our customers' supply chains, given the extraordinary market conditions triggered by both the global pandemic as well as the vessel blockage at the Suez Canal, we are accelerating the injection of new Dry containers into our fleet. By the end of the second quarter we will have added around 260.000 TEUs. This comes after the 400.000 TEUs already added to our fleet from July 2020 to January 2021.
Throughout this process we aim to give as much clarity and notice as possible, but please note that as the Suez situation deescalates, we will be emailing you less frequently. As impacts are localised and individual, please continue the conversation with your local Maersk team or visit Maersk.com for all the latest updates. Sincerely, A. P. Moller – Maersk |