Press Room

NEOLINK Announcement – Hamburg Sud First Shipping Line to Remove Congestion Surcharge – 5.3.21

Friday 5^th of March 2021

Dear Valued Clients,

We wanted to provide you with some positive news we received from Hamburg Sud late yesterday afternoon.

Hamburg Sud have announced that the situation in port botany despite some delays/challenges is improving with their vessel schedules expected to stabilise from mid March. As such they have announced they will be withdrawing the Sydney Congestion Charge, applicable to cargo loaded or received on vessels with a departure date from the 15^th of March from its origin port.

This is a big move from Hamburg Sud and will most certainly put pressure on the other shipping lines to follow suit. After being informed about the Hamburg Sud news we received a phone call from senior management at Maersk yesterday evening who also advised us that they expect to also make an announcement of the removal of their Port congestion charge as well within the next 24 hours.

NEOLINK’s policy with the Port Congestion Surcharge (PCS) has to been to pass this purely on at cost and only pass this on when charged. For all of our customers that have been issued with rate cards for the first half of March or have been quoted on upcoming shipments, please note that this is announcement is only for one shipping line at the stage and only applicable from Cargo departing in the 2^nd half of this month.

We hope that all of the shipping lines will follow suit quickly, but please note we cannot and will not limit our bookings just to Hamburg Sud in the short term due to a risk of vessels now being overbooked. Your Account Manager and Customer Operations Team will work closely with you on your own individual orders to keep you updated on the options we have to avoid the PCS where we can, but ultimately that is going to be down to the other lines following suit.

If you have any questions at all on the attached, please feel free to contact your Account Manager.

Best regards,

NEOLINK Marketing Team

Sydney port congestion surcharge – withdrawal