ContainerSignal Daily: Maersk moves up booking cut-off

Maersk has revised the timeline for cancelling bookings that never turn into shipments. From 15 October, an eligible booking may be cancelled automatically once at least five days have passed since the first vessel’s estimated time of departure and the cargo has not materialised, Container News reported. The carrier said the revised timeline lets it release unused capacity earlier and improve transport planning. The same week brought two small regional service additions and a Sabah decision to run the Sepanggar Bay container port around the clock, while carriers at a Singapore bunkering conference said shippers will not fund the transition to greener fuel.

Today’s Signals

Carrier Updates

A booked slot that is never used distorts a carrier’s utilisation picture and leaves capacity idle at the cut-off, which is why lines police no-shows. Maersk’s revision moves that cut-off to five days after the first vessel’s ETD, and the carrier has told customers to contact its service team where cargo is expected to move but may be affected by the change. Container News did not set out which bookings count as eligible, and Maersk’s advisory could not be retrieved from this host, so the precise scope belongs in the booking terms rather than in an assumption about any particular contract.

X-Press Feeders has restored a direct Busan to Dalian link with the Bohai Feeder X-Press (BHF2), a weekly service using one vessel of about 1,700 TEU on a Busan, Dalian, Busan rotation, Container News reported, citing DynaLiners. The loop returns the carrier to a corridor it left when the previous BHF2A service closed in 2025. Ships of this size are the working fleet of intra-Asia trades, where capacity is counted in hundreds of TEU per call rather than in the 13,000 TEU and larger classes that dominate the main east-west lanes, as our guide to how container ships are sized sets out.

Jade Pacific Line, a Singapore-based carrier established in April 2026, began an India to Red Sea service on 1 October with the 1,100 TEU MEDKON SIA, Container News reported, citing DynaLiners. The rotation is Mundra, Nhava Sheva, Karachi, Sokhna and back to Mundra, on an irregular schedule. That gives Indian and Pakistani export ports a direct call at Egypt’s Red Sea coast, a lane that has carried additional war risk cost while carriers have been adding capacity back through the Suez Canal, the subject of yesterday’s briefing.

Ports

The Sabah Cabinet has approved 24-hour operations at Sepanggar Bay Container Port to address logistics congestion, but implementation depends on whether depots, factories and government agencies can work the same hours, The Edge Malaysia reported on 18 October. Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Ewon Benedick said most local depots and factories still stop as early as 5pm, and that a monthly task force with agencies and shipping lines is monitoring 10 interim measures, including temporary trailer parking at the Kota Kinabalu Industrial Park. Sabah Ports handled 532,391 TEU in 2025, up 6.07%, of which Sepanggar Bay accounted for 74.6%, or 396,964 TEU. The port has already handled 416,854 TEU in the first nine months of 2026, above its full-year 2025 total.

Fleet & Capacity

Carriers speaking at the Singapore International Bunkering Conference and Exhibition on 15 October said the cost of alternative fuels is landing on them because shippers will not pay a premium, The Loadstar reported. Pacific International Lines’ Chia Yujin said shippers in price-sensitive markets were not ready to pay for the transition, so investment had to come “out of our own pocket”. X-Press Feeders’ Vijayachelvan Silva Raju said the company runs methanol-powered ships without customer cost-sharing, partly to build a pool of trained crew before 2030. Maersk’s Dinesh Kumar Balraj said alternative fuels need to be available at commercially viable prices, with bunkering facilities and trained crews in place. The Loadstar reported that Maersk has 56 dual-fuelled ships on order and 24 in operation, and put the number of containerships able to burn methanol or LNG on order at 650, against about 330 in September 2023.

That orderbook is where the funding question becomes concrete. If shippers will not pay a green premium, the cost sits in carrier unit costs, and the recovery route is freight rates, surcharges or network design rather than a separately priced product. Carbon pricing already reaches voyages to and from the European Union, which our guide to the EU Emissions Trading System for shipping explains.

At the small end, Guangzhou Port opened the Greater Bay Area’s first zero-carbon container route this week, putting the 240 TEU battery-electric Sui Gang Dian Hang 02 into service between Nansha and Hong Kong International Terminals with containerised batteries that can be swapped by crane or recharged directly, Splash 247 reported on 15 October. Authorities estimate each vessel in the series avoids more than 550 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year and over 19,000 tonnes over its operating life. No sailing frequency, cargo commitment or wider deployment plan was disclosed, and the model depends on short shuttle legs where charging and battery exchanges can be controlled.

What It Means

For forwarders, the Maersk change compresses the window in which a booking can be held as an option. Cargo that is rolled, delayed at the shipper or waiting on documentation can lose its slot five days after the first vessel sails, so bookings that will not be used are better cancelled than left open, and bookings that will be used need the cargo cut-off tracked against the ETD rather than against the sailing date on the quotation. Whether earlier release of unused capacity supports freight rates is a separate question, and one that depends on how much of the space was being held speculatively.

The service additions point the other way, in scale if not in direction. A 1,700 TEU feeder on the Korea to Bohai run and a 1,100 TEU ship from Mundra to Sokhna do not move the capacity dial, but they restore direct calls that shippers on those corridors had lost, and they show regional operators filling gaps while the mainline carriers manage the Red Sea return. Shippers should check the published rotation and schedule reliability rather than assume a weekly frequency holds.

Sepanggar Bay shows the limit of port-side fixes. A 24-hour gate does not help if the depot or factory receiving the box closes at 5pm, which is why the Sabah decision is conditional on the wider chain. With the port already above its full-year 2025 volume after nine months, the operational pressure is coming from growth, not from a temporary spike.

On fuel, the unresolved question is who pays. Carriers have ordered 650 containerships capable of running on methanol or LNG while saying their customers will not fund the premium, which leaves the cost to be recovered through commercial terms. The commercial logic points to that exposure appearing in freight and surcharge lines and in contract clauses tied to carbon costs rather than as an optional green add-on that shippers can decline.

Sources

• Container News, “Maersk updates automatic booking cancellation timeline”, 18 October 2026
• Container News, “X-Press Feeders restores Busan-Dalian connection”, 18 October 2026, citing DynaLiners
• Container News, “Jade Pacific Line launches India-Red Sea service”, 16 October 2026, citing DynaLiners
• The Edge Malaysia, “Sepanggar Bay Container Port gets nod from Sabah Cabinet for 24-hour operations”, 18 October 2026, syndicated by KLSE Screener
• The Loadstar, “We’re ‘shouldering cost burden of green transition’, say carriers”, 16 October 2026
• Splash 247, “Guangzhou and Hong Kong open electric container shuttle”, 15 October 2026