Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) has warned its customers that it has to take emergency measures and introduce a worldwide temporary bunker surcharge on all ocean and land-based cargo carriage with immediate effect.
As the surge in bunker prices continues to affect the container shipping lines' operating environment, MSC, which is the world’s second largest ocean carrier by vessel capacity, has had to pay more than 30% for its fuel prices this year.
The increased cost jumps to almost 70% when taking comparing the price to what it was in June 2017 as, in Europe, the figure exceeded $442/mt last week.
With crude oil today hovering around $80 a barrel, the highest since 2014, MSC has said that the situation is no longer sustainable without emergency action.
Lars Jensen, CEO, SeaIntelligence, recently forecasted the industry’s developments as far into the future as 2025 in his 'Liner Shipping in 2025' Port Technology technical paper
In a statement, MSC said: “This last-resort measure is essential to ensure that we navigate these challenging economic conditions in a steady and sustainable way and continue to provide a high quality of service to all our customers.
“We continue to evaluate longer-term strategies to help ease the situation.”
