Maersk Line will guarantee delivery times from Ningbo, Shanghai, Yantian and Tanjung Pelepas to Felixstowe, Rotterdam and Bremerhaven from next month. Failure to meet the commitment will enable shippers to claim compensation of USD100 per container if cargo availability is delayed by 1-3 days and USD300 per container if the delay is over three days.

    The guaranteed transit times between the cut off times in each loading port, which are the same every day of the week, and the date of cargo availability at each port of discharge, are as follows:

*Ningbo to Felixstowe, Bremerhaven and Rotterdam: 36 days
*Shanghai to Felixstowe, Bremerhaven and Rotterdam: 34 days
*Yantian to Felixstowe, Bremerhaven and Rotterdam: 30 days
*Tanjung Pelepas to Felixstowe, Bremerhaven and Rotterdam: 26 days.

    Moreover, the guaranteed delivery times will be available in each loading port every day of the week. That does not mean to say that there will be a vessel going to Felixstowe, Rotterdam and Bremerhaven every day. It only means that the cargo will become available at destination within the time frame prescribed no matter what day the cargo is delivered into the port by shippers within the agreed cut off time.

    In other words, the delivery times offered are not the fastest, only the 'worst case scenario'. That means the cargo should often arrive earlier, although free storage time in the port of discharge will only start counting from the scheduled day of arrival.

    To help demonstrate the point, Maersk Line currently has five weekly services from Ningbo to Rotterdam with transit times between sailing date and arrival date of 28 days, 30 days, 32 days, 33 days and 36 days. In the case of the slowest service (AE8), the implication is that the cut off time at port of loading will be just before departure, although at least a day is normally required for customs and security checks, and that the cargo will be made available to consignees on the same day of arrival.

    Force majeure will only be claimed by Maersk when exceptional circumstances arise, such as extremely severe weather or port strikes and closures. Asked to clarify the first point, Maersk Line's ceo, Eivind Kolding [pictured], said: 'Bad weather is always difficult to define, but the weather would have to be exceptionally bad for us to depart from the basic maxim that we want to keep our customers satisfied.'

    There will be no freight rate surcharge to be paid for the 'Daily Maersk' service, although Maersk will continue to seek recognition for better service from its customers during contract negotiations. However, just as Maersk will be committing itself to on-time delivery, it expects to start asking shippers to pay a no-show penalty fee for failure to deliver cargo booked on time in the first quarter of next year. Kolding elaborated: 'We will be making a promise regarding delivery, so we expect customers to make a promise to back up bookings.'

    The engine behind Maersk's 'Daily Maersk' schedule commitment is a fleet of over 70 super-post Panamax vessels, which, it claims, no one else can offer.

    Maersk Line's ground breaking initiative was revealed at a press gathering in London yesterday, when Kolding enthused: 'We set out to design a service that takes the stress out of our customers' lives, to change shipping from the weakest to the strongest link in the supply chain. After all, shipping is only around two percent of our customers' total cost. And yet our unreliability has until now forced them to shape their production plans and inventory around it

source:ci-online