NZ and USA ports update

NZ Port Congestion and Trucking Delays

Our NZ agent, Tri-Star, have provided us with the latest update on Auckland Port Issues as follows:

We would like to bring to your attention the ongoing challenges associated with capacity and congestion at Auckland port, that also impacts on container truckers operating in Auckland.

We must make you aware, several container transports companies have started applying congestion fees to all import/export container cartage, due to the significant delays they are experiencing. Across both Ports of Auckland and all empty container depots there is significantly more wait-time for these truckers, ranging from 30 minutes up to 4 hours for single pick-ups or deliveries. There is no consistency between shipping lines, location, or timing for these delays, however many truckers have already communicated the need to recover the associated costs immediately.

Truckers who have decided already to implement this surcharge will be reviewing this periodically, until waiting times have reduced consistently and we will continue to monitor this closely.

So far, we have received notification from truckers with varying congestion surcharges of up to $95.00 + GST per container, (20’ or 40’)at this time and the earliest of these will apply from 15th November 2021, dependent on trucker.

Unfortunately, we will need to pass this added cost on, relative to the trucker used to handle the delivery.

 

USA Port Situation and Booking Issues

 

USA ports continue to experience exceptional volume throughput on import and export containers, the situation is not improving as the Xmas rush continues to jam up ports, inland terminals and rail networks.

The volume of containers moving has also put a major strain on trucking resources right across the country with not only a shortage of drivers but also a huge shortage of chassis (trailers) and empty containers.

In another major blow to Oceania traffic, many shipping lines have started blocking all new bookings to Australia and New Zealand until further notice, Hapag-Lloyd and Hamburg-SUD lines being the latest lines involved.

They have now joined a large number of transhipment line services via Asia that have also blocked bookings to Oceania in recent weeks, with the likes of OOCL, COSCO, YML, Evergreen to name a few that are no longer accepting bookings to our area.

GPSM will keep all clients updated as soon as further information comes to hand.

Delays Continue for document assessment by Bio Securities

The department continues to experience high volumes of entry lodgements. The department has implemented a new queuing process in its COLS system to identify and prioritise entries. We anticipate that these delays will continue while we continue to experience unprecedented numbers of lodgements, and while we settle arrangements to separate and prioritise lodgements .

Patrick Applies to Terminate Agreement with MUA

Patrick Terminals has lodged an application with the Fair Work Commission to terminate its Enterprise Agreement with the MUA.

The agreement is no longer fit for purpose, as it contains a number of operational restrictions that have limited the ability of Patrick to meet customer requirements at a time of congestion in global supply chains.

Patrick has been negotiating with its employees and the MUA since February 2020 to seek to address these restrictions and has held more than 70 meetings in pursuit of a new enterprise agreement.

The MUA has launched more than 220 industrial actions against Patrick Terminals nationally during the negotiation period. This has intensified recently with further action launched at all four of Patrick’s terminals in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Fremantle for the coming days and weeks.

Michael Jovicic, CEO Patrick Terminals said, “Enough is enough. We have presented the MUA with an attractive national offer on top of their already very generous agreement including a 10% pay increase across four years coupled with protections addressing concerns over the use of casuals and job security.

“Negotiations have been ongoing for close to two years and frankly there seems to be no agreement to be had, particularly in Sydney, where the union is still demanding we hire from a selected list of family and friends.

“We have today lodged an application with the FWC for an order terminating our current agreement.

“We are at the end of the road and need to have an agreement with our employees that works for our customers, and that allows us to remain competitive in the future market.”

Terminating the agreement will allow Patrick to recruit and train employees without needing the agreement of the Union and remove any “friends and family” Union imposed restrictions.

“The world has changed, and we need to be able to recruit and promote the best people for the job rather than be hamstrung by antiquated Union-led processes and policies that restrict our business,” Mr Jovicic said.

“Our market share and business operations have suffered due to this relentless industrial campaign by the MUA and their insidious ‘jobs for the boys’ stance. We need to provide our customers with operational certainty and that includes a workable agreement with our employees. Our customers are demanding that we take action to resolve this situation.”

Patrick Terminals has guaranteed not to change leave entitlements, salaries and other rates of pay that are applicable under the Enterprise Agreement for employees for a period of 6 months from the date of any termination order, probably next year.

Patrick Terminals has requested an expedited hearing of this application with the Fair Work Commission.

If you have any questions relating to this notification, please speak to your Patrick commercial representative.

 

Regards,

Patrick Terminals

Further Industrial Action at Sydney and Melbourne Terminals

Patrick Terminals has received notifications for industrial action at our Patrick Terminals – Melbourne and Patrick Terminals – Sydney AutoStrad. These notifications are listed below in bold .

After weeks of significant labour availability due to the impact of COVID-19 cases in Melbourne, the MUA has now taken to issue the Melbourne terminal with two weeks of continuous rolling stoppages and work bans for the first two weeks of November that will significantly impact the ability of the terminal to recover.

The MUA continues to launch further damaging industrial action despite ongoing discussions occurring with the National office on a near-daily basis in an attempt to finalise the Enterprise Agreement.

Michael Jovicic, CEO Patrick Terminals said, “We have requested on multiple occasions that the MUA bargain without continuing their economically damaging industrial action.

“Now issuing 19 new industrial notifications of rolling 12-hour strike actions every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the coming fortnight at our already struggling Melbourne terminal is frankly bewildering. Our terminal is still working to recover from reduced labour availability due to recent COVID-19 cases and this industrial action will result in significant delays.

“Plus we now have a 24-hour stoppage in Sydney on Melbourne Cup Day.

“We call on the MUA once again to accept the generous offer on the table and move forward with just getting back to work.”

 

Terminal Operations Update

Patrick Terminals – Sydney AutoStrad

  • The current delays at the Sydney terminal are on average 1 day and are forecast to increase with the current and notified industrial action for Melbourne Cup Day.

 

Patrick Terminals – Brisbane AutoStrad

  • The current delays at the Brisbane terminal are up to 5 days and are forecast to increase with the current industrial action.

Patrick Terminals – Fremantle AutoStrad

  • The terminal is being impacted by industrial action with vessel delays now averaging 8.5 days.

 

Patrick Terminals – Melbourne AutoStrad

  • The terminal is presently operating with a 4 days delay due to reduced labour availability resulting from COVID cases and close contact isolation requirements. Delays are forecast to increase with notified industrial action.

 

Patrick Terminals continues to work with customers to minimize the impact of this industrial action by the MUA. Our focus continues to be on supporting the Australian supply chain with an efficient and effective service that supports Australia’s economic recovery.

Please reach out to your Client Services Manager if you would like any further details.

 

Regards,

Patrick Terminals

Demonstrators block major Italian ports in protest of mandatory Covid health pass

Major ports in Italy have been blocked all weekend as workers strike against mandatory vaccines and vaccine passports. Italy made Covid-19 health passes mandatory for all workers from Friday. The so-called Green Pass confirms the holder is vaccinated against, recently recovered from, or recently tested negative for Covid-19.

The largest demonstrations were at the port of Trieste, where thousands of dockworkers and residents joined the action to pressure the Italian government to abandon the Green Pass policy. Protesters have also been blocking the port of Genoa for three days and two nights and similar actions were reported nationwide.

Port workers, drivers and citizens in Trieste have threatened that if the Green Pass obligation in the workplace is not withdrawn, activity will come to a halt in the port where 40% of the workers are reportedly unvaccinated. Police have also warned all dockworkers that they will forcibly evacuate the port if the protests continue.

Concessions offered by Italian authorities have so far been rejected by port worker representatives and the Italian government has not indicated that it is likely to reverse its decision on the Green Pass requirement.

No end in sight for China power crisis as pressure grows on supply chains

China’s power crisis is expected to further disrupt supply chains bringing longer lead times and a preference for high-value goods.

Last month, factories across Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta manufacturing heartland and nine other provinces were forced to cut output due to government-imposed energy caps.

According to Jacky Yan, founder and CEO of Chengdu-based New Silk Road Intermodal, the power cuts have already had a “big impact” on manufacturing, combining with the usual Golden Week lull to trigger a rare dip in container freight rates.

“And there’s still no certain answer when the shortages will end,” he told The Loadstar.

A combination of factors are putting extreme pressure on China’s energy consumption, Mr Yan explained. First, coal and gas accounts for three-quarters of the country’s energy usage and import prices have surged in recent weeks.

“With increased rates for coal and a relatively fixed electricity price, the energy firms have been losing huge amounts of money every day. So they have the temptation to produce less electricity,” he said. “Furthermore, winter is the dry season for the main rivers, which leads to less hydropower. Winter also means the government needs to prioritise the supply of electricity for heating and consumption.”

Another cause of the energy shortage is China’s emission targets, Mr Yan added. Since the country had used most of the quota set by the government in the first nine months of the year, there was now the need to pull back.

“Lastly, with the Covid outbreak in South-east Asia, many labour-intensive manufacturing, with high-energy consumption, was temporarily moved back to China, but this is not what the government wants, so we have tighter controls on this as well.”

Indeed, set out in the Made in China 2025 plan, Beijing has been heavily focused on moving manufacturing higher up the value chain and discouraging the low-value production said to be a major source of emissions.

One Shanghai-based forwarder said: “If the crisis continues, it will reduce manufacturing output significantly and lead to lower export cargo volumes and longer lead times. For example, some manufacturers have started giving priority to orders for higher-value goods.”

Not all forwarders are seeing a major impact, however. Stefan Holmqvist, MD of Norman Global Logistics Hong Kong, noted there have been previous power shortages in China, due to hot weather or production spikes due to high demand.

“But this is ongoing, with adjustments to allotted production days in many provinces,” he said.

Containership Traffic Jam in Southeast Asia Worst Since April

Typhoon Kompasu has resulted in the worst container shipping traffic jam in months, one that now stretches throughout Southeast Asia and may take weeks to unravel.

Although port operations are largely back to normal in Shenzhen and Hong Kong after the tropical storm’s passing, the total container ship count off the two vital hubs had ballooned to 271 as of early Friday, the highest count recorded since Bloomberg News started tracking the data in April.

At least 109 ships were meanwhile reported as anchored and waiting to enter the ports, up from 67 on Thursday.

“The supply chain is very stretched, with no buffer, so any little event will cause another big problem,” James Teo, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said. “There are too many choke points.”

Teo expects port congestion will likely continue until at least the Lunar New Year holiday, which next falls on Feb. 1.

The storm, which is now bearing down on Vietnam, has also scattered ships out of Haiphong, that country’s third largest container port. Further down the coastline, waiting container ships off Singapore reached their highest since July 21, when Typhoon In-fa battered Shanghai and similarly snarled the region’s supply chain.

PSA Corp., which operates Singapore’s container terminals, said it’s working with shipping line customers to help them catch up on their delayed schedules and meet cargo connections.

“The global supply chain disruption is likely to continue for the foreseeable future and PSA will continue to ensure the adequate deployment of resources,” the terminal operator said in an emailed statement.

The impact of typhoons in Asia has rippled through the global supply chain, similar to the effect of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico that have caused logjams in the world’s largest economies. U.S.

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that the Port of Los Angeles will now operate 24 hours a day to help smooth out kinks.

Congestion off America’s largest container port remains elevated, Bloomberg-compiled data show, but has eased to be 2.9% above the median observed by from April to October.

Source : Bloomberg News

 

Minimum documentary and import declaration requirements policy

This document defines the minimum documentary and import declaration requirements that must be met when lodging a declaration to the department to support risk assessment of imported goods, whether for biosecurity purpose or the Imported Food Inspection Scheme.

Attachments

Trucking Charges

LCL and Airfreight Trucking Charges:

GPSM has had fixed LCL and airfreight trucking charges in Australia for some 8 years without any cost increases being passed to clients.

We were looking to introduce a general rate increase earlier this year but in light of the escalating COVID situation we again postponed any increases.

Unfortunately the situation in LCL and airfreight cargo depots has not improved this year with extensive delays on a daily basis with waiting on average 4-5 hours for trucks to be loaded, despite being at the depots from around 5am, sometimes earlier.

We regret the need to increase any costs but it is now to a point where we are unable to cover the escalating costs, naturally we do wish to continue providing a premium service in all states, and in order to do so, effective from 1st October, 2021 we shall be forced to implement increased trucking charges. Many of our interstate sub-contractors increased the rates earlier this year and we cannot continue to absorb those increases.

The average increase is around 7.5% and revised rates will be added to the GPSM charges module, rates in Fremantle will reflect a larger increase due to the on-going and disruptive industrial action at Fremantle port/depots and the complexities of LCL deliveries in WA.

 

FCL Trucking rates:

FCL trucking charges in some states were increased by most trucking companies between 1st February and 1st April, 2021 by way of base rate or fuel levy as a result of the increased cost of diesel fuel, now up by some 13% since mid-2020.

The issues we have faced with empty container depots, port congestion, terminal COVID outbreaks and often needing to transfer containers to our yard in late night “stack-runs” to avoid the daytime port delays, have all led to increased operating costs.

Again, GPSM have not passed on any increases in the past 4-5 years, rather we have tried to negotiate better rates or absorb most of those cost increases over this time, and while some of our interstate trucking partners have assisted us slightly, we cannot continue absorbing losses and still provide clients with a premium trucking service.

From 1st October, 2021 we will be left with no alternative but to implement a general rate increase of approximately 7.5% for Metro Area rates, the new rates will be updated to the GPSM charges module.