Line mulls financial penalty for delays to shippers ... but not in SA

The concept of a service level agreement – in which Maersk Line is mulling accepting financial penalties in its Asia-Europe contracts if it is unable to deliver the service it has promised – is not currently on the table for SA, according to Maersk MD David Williams. The problem that is behind the European plans for a possible agreement is one that hit the shipping industry at the start of this year, when an unexpected surge of volumes resulted in demand exceeding supply and shipments being delayed. Maersk wants shippers to provide more accurate information on when they would need goods shipped so that the line can better match demand and supply. At the same time – if shippers clarify their shipping schedules to the line – Maersk is considering accepting financial penalties if it fails to deliver the service it has sold, according to Annemette Jepsen, senior director and cluster manager UK and Ireland. She added that this would require customers to get better at forecasting their needs. The line is not expecting them to provide tight figures for the whole year ahead. “But we need to have something that will help ensure that customers use slots when they have booked them, so we get to more of a fixed and mutually binding commitment,” Jepsen said. “We are working with scenarios where we would be willing to accept a financial penalty if we failed to deliver a slot we had promised.” “The scheme referred to by my colleague in the UK is not something that has been developed in our market,” Williams told FTW. “We do however continue to work very closely with our customers (specifically in the reefer industry, but also with dry commodity exports) to ensure we fill our ships on a port-by-port and week-byweek basis through constant communication, accurate forecasting and the timely delivery of containers to the ports for loading.”