As a follow-up to my 9th and 15th March email notifying you of the "shipping bottleneck" caused
by motor vehicles being caught up in a quarantine traffic jam in Australian ports resulting in more
than 60,000 new and used motor vehicles bottlenecked in Australian ports and more than 24 Car
Carrier Vessels needing to anchor offshore at Australia's west coast ports unable to discharge
their cargo.
MOL has yet to confirm the size of their April Mid-Month (MM) and End of Month (EM) vessels;
therefore, we are unable to verify our Roll-On-Roll-Off (RORO) space assignment.
Containerizing at Kobe was scheduled to resume yesterday; however, this has not begun due to
MPI clearance issues. Vanning should start sometime this week.
I am continuing to pursue multiple charter vessel options daily, however at this point have yet to
be able to secure a suitable vessel that will provide the well-needed relief needed to clear the
bottleneck of more than 2000 of your vehicles purchased from us, sitting on the ports here in
Japan.
MOL has said that this traffic jam and bottleneck will take 3 to 6 months to work through and for
regular services to resume.
The "Priority Shipping Rules" will apply for space as outlined in my 15th May notice, and without
exception to be fair and reasonable to all our valued customers, the "First in First Out (FIFO)" rule
will also apply.
a. Jet Logistics Japan (JLJ) is a professional Freight forwarder and cargo consolidator with expertise in vanning containers for the past 20 years.
b. Jet Logistics NZ (JLNZ) will manage the devanning, customs clearance, and MPI inspections
within the ports of Auckland and Lyttleton transitional facilities and trucking to anywhere within
the metro area.
c. 40ft high-cube container vanning will be limited to Kobe and Kisarazu.
d. We will transport some units purchased from the Tokai/Nagoya region to Kobe, with an inland
trucking rate of JPY10,000/unit will be invoiced to cover this leg.
e. The following vanning plan will allow JLJ to load five units per container.
f. Devanning within the Ports of Auckland and Lyttleton's transitional facility will minimize the
number of container movements, reducing the risk of damage and allowing us to deliver your
cars to you as quickly and safely.
a. Container Surcharge (CNS) of NZD374/unit will be invoiced to all consignees using container
vanning services.
b. MOLs twice monthly RORO service will not incur any surcharges.
c. Vessel charters may require a surcharge.
IBC has received several requests from customers asking to change their payment terms to
Payment on Loading (POL) to have their vehicles assigned to shipping as Priority 1 status and
others from Priority 3 status to Priority 2.
Priority 3 customers' services have stopped until shipping services return to normality.
Your Account Manager will contact you with a new Vehicle Supply Agreement (VSA). Please sign
this as soon as possible so accounts and administration can update your profile and lock in your
shipping priority status.
Volume customers are requested to slow down their purchasing until the backload of vehicles at
the ports of Japan has reduced; however, despite best efforts, we continue to add more and more
pressure to our backload of cargo due to the bottleneck.
From Monday the 20th of March iDirect and Buy Trip services will stop and continue for seven
days.
Over the week, my team and I will continue to coordinate with MOL vessel and space allocations,
Jet Logistics vanning output, and the likelihood of securing a vessel charter and decide whether
to.
a. Extend for another seven days to suspend iDirect and Buy Trip services
b. Partially resume iDirect and Buy Trip services.
c. Fully resume iDirect and Buy Trip services.
The above process will continue with weekly updated notices being sent to you every Sunday at
noon (NZ Time).
IBC has seen a steady increase in sales since January, speeding up in February, with March
activity on track to reach levels IBC has never seen before. But unfortunately, this bottleneck
needs to be in cadence with the current rate of sales we are experiencing. At the current pace,
by the end of this month, more than 3000 of the units will remain sitting in the Ports of Japan, with
no certainty of when regular services will resume.
Our logistics Service Provider, "Jet logistics," is doing all it can to ramp up the number of
containers it can load daily. Once they have met their stride, it is expected that they will be able
to up to 800 units per month,
Jet logistics and I continue to be active in the charter market, looking for vessels allowing us to
ship between 800 and 1500 units.
These two options will provide immediate relief to the backload, allowing us to resume services
immediately while we work with MOL on other solutions to the traffic jam in Australia.
IBC is committed to working through this challenging time to ensure that services can resume
normality as much as practically possible.
I am incredibly proud of the effort that IBC and its logistic service providers (Jet logistics) in rallying
around to find solutions to this bottleneck and shipping problems.
We are in challenging times, and for one, in the 35 years of running IBC, we have not experienced
anything of this magnitude.
Please call me directly if you would like to discuss this in more detail.
Your continued understanding, cooperation, and support to my team and I are greatly appreciated.
