Blank sailing and avocado: the risk of missing an exit

Those of us who work in maritime transport are quite used to hearing the term "blank sailing." For the exporter or importer with their avocado shipment ready, the explanation is simpler: the ship that was on the itinerary simply isn't coming.

A shipping company publishes weekly services, and you plan accordingly. You coordinate production, packing, land transport, port entry, and delivery date to the customer. But when the shipping company decides to cancel one of those sailings, the infamous blank sailing occurs.

Why does blank sailing occur?

There are perfectly understandable operational reasons. Port congestion, accumulated delays, weather problems, ship maintenance, or simply the need to get back on schedule.

But there is also a much more commercial reason: managing capacity.

If there is more available space than cargo on a particular route, rates naturally tend to decrease. One of the tools shipping companies have is to temporarily remove capacity from the market. Instead of operating four sailings during the month, for example, they can cancel one and concentrate the cargo on the other three.

A chain reaction

And that's where the problem for the customer begins. Because eliminating a ship doesn't mean eliminating the cargo it was supposed to carry. That cargo remains waiting.

Part of the cargo is transferred to the next ship, which already had its own bookings. Suddenly, we have more cargo trying to fit into less space. Rollovers appear, availability is tight, and finding space becomes much more complicated.

And naturally, when space is scarce, prices find room to rise or, at least, to stop falling.

For dry goods, losing a week might be inconvenient. For perishable goods, it's a completely different story. Fruit doesn't understand blank sailings.

The avocado has been harvested, packaged, and has a limited shelf life. If it misses a delivery window, those extra seven days can mean it arrives in poor condition, reduces its shelf life at its destination, or even misses a particular market opportunity.

That's why the problem isn't just that "they cancelled a ship." The real effect lies in the chain of events that follows.

A blank sailing can mean an extra week of waiting, but also congestion on the next ship, lack of space, equipment problems, connection changes and ultimately alterations to the arrival date.

Shipping companies, of course, need to manage their fleets and adjust capacity to demand. It's part of the business, and it would be unrealistic to think otherwise.

What should the exporter do?

But from the exporter's side there is an equally important conclusion: today it is no longer enough to look at the schedule and assume that because a ship appears on Tuesday, we will necessarily have a ship on Tuesday.

Especially when working with perishable products, we need to look a little further: what's happening with the route, how many blank sailings are being announced, what the next ships are like, and what alternatives exist if our departure disappears.

Because in maritime logistics, a week seems like a short time. Until you have 20 tons of fruit waiting for the ship.

Jorge Rosés W.
International Sales Manager
Seemann Trader
jroses@seemanngroup.com