News

A way to cleaner, more accurate export bookings
Change in Australian/ NZ export booking time frames

15th July 2021

To our valued customers,

At Hamburg Süd, we are constantly looking to improve the quality of the information provided to you so we can collectively manage efficiently and accurately your export bookings from the time of booking, to departure from the coast.

The significant operational challenges we currently face together include port congestion and delayed vessels schedules through the coast, connectivity at transhipment hubs both here in Oceania and globally, empty container supply and availability, as well as vessels slipping back and different market strings arriving out of sequence and against out dated ETAs.

The consequence of all these challenges and the ever changing environment, means that your operators and our Customer Experience (CX) and Sales teams, spend a significant amount of time processing and reworking bookings multiple times over the life time of the booking until its time of departure and beyond. The majority of these changes are collectively out of our control and are forced upon our respective teams.

In order to address this significant workload burden and to provide you, our customers, with a more dependable and accurate booking, packing and delivery programme, we wish to advise that with effect from Monday July 19th, 2021 we will only accept and process new export bookings in Oceania, a maximum of 6 weeks out from the last load port date.

Processing and planning your bookings closer to the scheduled last port ETD, will reduce much of these operational variables, create more accurate booking results, control over equipment supply, empty depot pick up’s, terminal cargo receivals and transport plans.

Additionally in order to improve processing accuracy and efficiency, we will only process export bookings with completed and accurate booking information such as, but not limited to; Agreement number, correct transport plans (routing of POL, POD, TS and PLD), vessel-voyage. This refers to both EDI and ‘manual’ booking messages.

We recognise this places new requirements on you and your operators, but it will ensure that our CX teams can process bookings more efficiently, with greater accuracy and provide a more complete booking experience to pro-actively address the afore mentioned challenges over the life span of the booking.

We thank you for your support and if you have any questions, please contact your local customer service desk should you require further details.

Thanks,

WCP.