Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Finnish Ports Increase Rates After Strike

The cost of the Finnish stevedore strike increased this week for customers that need to transport containers to Finland as overseas shipping companies taking container freight to Finland announced new surcharges many say are a direct result of the strike action. There have been a lot of freight containers sitting in the ports of northern Europe during the two week strike and the end of the strike has meant all of these containers need to be transported to Finland. The logjam of containers has meant there have been delays in getting containers to destination in Finland and this has resulted in shipping transportation firms delivering the containers deciding to add a few new fees in order to cover their increased costs.

The increases probably aren’t a surprise for most shipping container transportation professionals that have been watching the two-week long strike and wondering what the final price of the strike would be for all involved. We can probably expect the price of transporting containers to Finland to stay high until the logjam of containers is taken care of and the numbers return to normal levels. Customers will just have to deal with the additional costs if they want to get their freight to destination and because of the present logjam there’s only so much capacity for moving containers to destinations in Finland. We might even expect to see more firms transporting containers to Finland to introduce surcharges and fees in order to try to cover the increases in their operating expenses.

No comments:

Post a Comment