Maersk has launched very welcome additional service on the southbound Asia tradelane. They have introduced extra vessels and added extra port calls adding much needed capacity to the market place. Direct calls NZ include Lyttelton, Tauranga, Auckland & Port Chalmers.

Good news indeed

the weekend of the 16 & 17th July & the start of the next week the Ports of Auckland will have increased volume of containers moving through due to the late arrival of the vessels - Maersk Dabou & MOL Summer.

The plan is to begin work on the Maersk Dabou Saturday afternoon (16th) & then halt operations to make way for other vessels on Sunday evening. Maersk Dabou is expected back at Ferguson Terminal on the afternoon of Tuesday 19th to complete its exchange. This means that some containers may not be available off the vessel until Wednesday 20th July.

During the time please be advised that Fergusson Terminal will be extremely busy, all trucks will need to arrive on-time for their VBS bookings. Trucks arriving out of time face delays before entering the terminal.

The CAFCA has received advice from Patrick that work will recommence at their Port Botany (Sydney) terminal at 9.00am today (Friday 27/05).

Import time slots have been released and entry will be permitted from 08.30am today for all trucks.

Transport operators will receive notification of week-end slot availability later this morning.

Patrick is still sorting out with shipping lines all export receival dates. All export receivals are currently cut off  until this comes out.

From October 2010 the amount under Customs revenue waiver provision for imported goods will increase from $50.00 to $60.00. The increase has been made to offset the increase in GST to 15% from the same date.

Customs will have the discretion to not collect import duty and GST where the total revenue payable on any one shipment is less than $60.00. This means the revenue waiver provision will continue to generally apply to a shipment valued at $399 or less (CIF)

The revenue waiver provision does not apply to alcohol or tobacco products.

From 01 July 2010 the New Zealand Customs service will begin an Import Transaction fee (ITF) of $24.75 ($22 plus GST) to import consignments. In addition to this levy MAF Biosecurity system levy (BSEL) will also be increased to $12.50 (including GST). The fee will be charged whenever an ITF is applied.

We are pleased to announce that LCL (Less than container load) rates from China & Hong Kong to Auckland / Wellington / Lyttleton will reduce. This reduction will be effective from sailings on / after 22 March 2010.

The general situation from Europe and the Mediterranean is that there is a shortage of space on all vessels out of Europe to Asai and Central America (in the case of Hamburg Sud), once containers have arrived at those transhipment points there is furthe space shortage on second leg vessels to New Zealand.

Normally we would have expected space problems to have eased by now heading in to December but to date they haven't. This is largely due to the fact that shipping lines have cancelled services meaning that where there were once 5 sailings a week ex Europe there are now just 3 as opposed to any increase in trade.

We will try to keep delays to a minimum and advise you of short shipments as soon as we can. we are in constant contact with shipping lines regarding the situation.

Please allow for at least one week longer than expected for your freight to arrive from Europe.

Further to my last "Orbit" monthly news letter please be advised that all direct carriers off the East & West Coast USA / Canada to NZ have announced a General Rate Increase of US$150 per TEU (20' FCL) effective 1st December.

As a direct result of this LCL rates ex USA to NZ will be increased - this increase will be USD$6.00 per w/m (effective 1st Dec).

On the 15th December the USA EFAF (BAF) will be increasing from USD540 to USD 644 per TEU. Again as a direct result of this we will have no choice but to increase BAF for LCL shipments by USD4 w/m.