A council says the quiet part

Most shipper association papers are written to be cited, not read. The Northern Shippers’ Council, a body of roughly 300 importers across the Baltic and North Sea, has just published a four-page memo on blank sailings that breaks the habit. Page three contains this paragraph:

Between January and June, our members were notified of 61 cancelled sailings on Asia to North Europe services. In the same period, our members’ own bookings were rolled or cancelled on 140 occasions. The difference, 79 incidents, did not correspond to any announced blank sailing. We believe these represent capacity withdrawn through vessel substitution, port omission, and cargo prioritisation, and we do not believe they were reported in carrier statistics. We therefore request that the Commission treat announced blank sailings as a lower bound.

I like this paragraph because it does arithmetic in public. Sixty-one announced, 140 experienced. The council does not accuse anyone of anything. It simply reports that its members saw more disruption than the carriers announced, and asks a regulator to notice.

What the numbers can and cannot say

Be careful here. The 140 figure comes from 300 members self-reporting through a survey, and the council says the response rate was 58%. A survey of that kind can overcount, because one cancelled sailing may generate three rolled bookings from three members who share the same forwarder. It can also undercount, because a member who was never rolled has no reason to reply.

My own schedule tracking, which I describe in the issue of 21 July, finds a similar gap on a different footing: vessel substitutions without announcement on about one service in eight, over the same period. That is not the council’s data, but it points the same way.

The sentence I would keep

Buried two paragraphs later is a line I think is the real contribution: “A blank sailing is a decision that is announced. A substitution is a decision that is merely made.” That is quotable, a little too neat, and correct. I would put it on a card by your desk next to the weekly rate table.

The memo makes three requests: that the Commission define blank sailings by capacity withdrawn, not by announcement; that carriers report nameplate capacity by sailing; and that the first of these take effect from the next quarter. The third is a hope. The first two are possible, though the second would take a carrier a spreadsheet and some embarrassment.

Next month I will ask three carriers what they make of it. I expect that two will say nothing and the third will send a statement that uses the word “flexibility” four times. I will count.