The impact of MSC/Maersk/CMA recent announcements on the supply chain

As the world’s largest shipping companies, CMA MSC and Maersk, halt all activity with Russia, the already disrupted container shipping industry is looking at even more disturbance up ahead. According to data from the Windward platform, container vessels owned or operated by MSC , CMA and Maersk have made 1244 port calls) in Russian ports in the past 12 months.
This represents 28% of all container vessels operations taking place at Russian ports by container vessels in that same time period. Out of the 403 container vessels that operated in Russia in the past year 149 vessels are owned by MSC, CMA and Maersk.

Using data from Windward’s Ocean Freight Visibility solution and the World Bank, we are able to estimate that MSC, CMA and Maersk would have been in charge of moving approximately 101k containers in and out of Russia in the coming month of March.

Without MSC,CMA and Maersk containers available, we think there could be a few potential outcomes:

1.Significant reduction in the exports and imports of goods to and from Russia. Maersk and MSC suspending their operations are joining Nike, Ford, Apple and others which simply announced they will stop doing business in Russia.
2.A shift in the trade balance – effectively having other liners pick up the slack and export from Russia into other non-Western countries.

It’s not clear at this point if there is a possibility that MSC, CMA and Maersk will unload some of the Russian bound shipments at other ports but if so it might imply

Increased congestion at the ports that will be available and willing to accept these transshipments as well as heightened risks of delay for these shipments, as transshipments add more logistics and milestones where things can go wrong.

Another important observation we made was that the vast majority of port operations of MSC , CMA and Maersk took place in the Western part of Russia.
On Russia’s East coast located in East Asia, the volume of operations is not as significant as the western part.

To better predict the effect of MCS, CMA and Maersk decision, we went on to query port calls performed by container vessels in the Russian ports throughout the past year.

The below screenshot  shows the port calls performed by MSC, CMA and Maersk container vessels in Russia during the past year. If we look at the Eastern coast of Russia, it is quite obvious that out of the overall activity in the area, MSC, CMA and Maersk represent small part, meaning their limitations will have a very minor effect on the Eastern-side trade for Russia.

In simple numbers – 149 unique MSC and Maersk and CMA container vessels called port in Russia 1244 times in the past year.

Another aspect we looked at was the destination and origin country for these MSC and Maersk containers following or preceding their operation in the Russian ports:

Conclusion
As we can see, while these new developments from major shipping liners will have an effect on Russia’s trade, it might not be as detrimental and as crucial to Russia as the West hopes it to be.
Additionally, as there are other companies who have yet to stop their trade and business with Russia, we believe these containers will be picked up by smaller shipping companies.
This means more ships at each additional port, which will lead to an even bigger congestion than now, and will cause an even greater increase in shipping costs as there will be less space for containers and supplies won’t be enough to meet the demand.
Source: Windward Maritime AI