Severe Weather Causes Widespread Delays to Transatlantic Shipping Lanes

Recently, a series of intense winter storms have swept across Northern Europe, Western Europe and the North Atlantic waters, inflicting a severe blow on transatlantic shipping. Persistent strong winds, huge waves and low-pressure systems brought by the severe weather have forced a large number of vessels to slow down navigation, alter routes or seek shelter in harbours, which in turn led to widespread and prolonged service delays on the shipping lanes from Europe to the U.S. East Coast, including Canada and the United States.

Core Impacts and Specific Cases

According to analyses, the severe weather conditions in the North Atlantic over the past four weeks are the primary cause of the delays. Among all affected services, MSC's Canada Express has been the hardest hit. Its vessel MSC JOY took shelter in the Irish Sea to evade the storms and diverted to sail north of Ireland, avoiding the Bay of Biscay where wave heights exceeded 8 to 10 meters. This manoeuvre, however, resulted in a delay of up to 10 days for its arrival at Montreal.

COSCO Shipping's shipping lanes have also been severely disrupted. Vessels on its GEX2 service suffered delays of up to 8 days; for instance, the M/V MONTREAL EXPRESS drifted and took shelter in the English Channel. The GEX1 service saw vessel delays of 5 days due to route alterations and speed reductions caused by adverse weather.

Response Strategies of Shipping Companies

Faced with the accumulating delays, some shipping companies have begun adjusting the sequence of port calls to mitigate the impacts. For example, on the SL1/CAE joint service operated by CMA CGM and Maersk, the vessel CMA CGM PARANAGUA has advanced its arrival time at Halifax while postponing its call at Montreal. MSC has also implemented a similar port swap between Halifax and Montreal for its MSC-Med Canadian service.

Extensive Scope of Affected Shipping Lanes

The ongoing winter weather has had an extremely far-reaching impact, disrupting more than 15 transatlantic shipping lanes and covering almost all major shipping alliances and operators on the Europe-Canada and Europe-U.S. East Coast corridors. The affected shipping lanes include but are not limited to:

1.MSC's Canada Express and Mediterranean-Canada routes

2.COSCO Shipping's GEX1 and GEX2 services

3.CMA CGM's SL1, AMERIGO, TUX and other routes

4.Maersk's CAE, TA3 and other routes

as well as the joint-operated routes of numerous shipping companies such as Ocean Network Express (ONE), Evergreen Marine, Yang Ming Marine Transport, ZIM Integrated Shipping Services and Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL).

In addition, some trans-Pacific shipping lanes that call at the U.S. East Coast and Eastern Canada and need to cross the North Atlantic have also been affected.

Vessel delays are expected to continue in the coming days. As vessels are required to constantly adjust their navigation speed and routes in accordance with real-time severe weather conditions, the Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) at various ports will remain unstable.

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