Maersk Europe Market Update (January 2024)

At Maersk’s key ports in the south of Europe, terminals are showing a stable performance with good operational outcomes. Port of Tangier saw an increase in capacity with the recent expansion that became fully operational on 1 January this year. At the same time, terminal yard in Algeciras will need to undergo repairs, resulting in a reduced yard space. Our teams are working on appropriate cargo planning to mitigate any impact to customers and maintain operational excellence in delivery.

On the north side of the continent, the holiday period and unfavourable weather conditions have led to terminal closures and navigation stoppages. Combined with the current situation in the Red Sea, this is leading to increased yard density across terminals and customers are kindly asked to pick up their units as soon as possible after discharge to support fluidity.

To avoid longer transit times for cargo redirected around the Cape of Good Hope, Maersk teams have worked on securing Sea-Air coverage via Dubai and Salalah, which can help minimise delays in customers’ supply chains. Customers can make use of our ‘in-transit’ mode of transportation change, whereby if they have cargo on vessels calling Salalah or Jebel Ali ports, they can transfer it to a Sea-Air shipment and use air fright to reach its final destination in Europe or the US. Current challenges will also have an effect on supply chains out of Europe, where our Air-Sea offering that extends via Singapore to Asia and Australia can help get ahead of potential delays.

Please click here to find helpful information about our air freight network and our services to and from Europe.

For customers that have booked carrier haulage with us, our teams will plan the deliveries according to the updated vessel ETAs, while customers with merchant haulage are encouraged to connect with their usual contacts to plan cargo pick-up accordingly. To help further mitigate the impact of disruptions, our teams have worked on securing additional haulage capacity to support customers who wish to replan their containers to carrier haulage. For more information, please reach out to your usual Maersk representative.

In Germany, strike action across roads and railways have led to disruptions of inland transportation. Our teams continue to monitor the situation and focus on minimising the impact on our customers’ supply chains by working closely with rail and air freight operators. Find out the latest updates on our advisory page.

This year, our experts suggest that businesses should prioritise building and implementing robust trade and customs strategies. Over 20% of pandemic-related delays were due to customs issues – emphasising just how important leveraging data across complex supply chains can be.

Regulatory changes, like CBAM in the EU, including other ESG-related legal frameworks, will force compliance demands and a heightened focus on governance model and digitisation to enable standardisation, proactivity and financial control. As such, there will be a significant need for enhanced data availability, traceability and visibility. Invest in your trade and customs strategies to transform challenges into a competitive edge and find new business opportunities. Please reach out to our team of customs experts to find out more.

As a way to reduce costs, while at the same time increasing success rate of deliveries, ecommerce businesses are increasingly offering PUDO (pick-up drop-off) deliveries, resulting in a faster growth of PUDO deliveries than home deliveries in the European market. To make PUDO deliveries a viable proposition, a network should have at least 1 PUDO point per 10000 inhabitants. In Europe, majority of countries have exceeded this number, with Poland leading the way with almost 40 PUDO points per 10000 inhabitants.

The downside is that in many cases, the network of locations is fragmented and a single carrier may not be able to reach the required density, resulting in an inconsistent distance that the end consumer has to travel to pick up their parcel, in turn decreasing the usage of PUDO locations.