Atlantic Container Line (ACL) president and chief executive Andrew Abbott says that 2018 is the year when “we finally have everything working properly.”
He told CST in an exclusive interview that its new fleet of ships have been “plagued with problems” over the past two years. But this is all set to change in 2018.
ACL’s five G4 conros have replaced its entire previous fleet. The new fleet is bigger, faster, more efficient and greener then the current fleet.
The first three ships spent three months each in drydock in Germany for repairs/modifications and a fourth is in drydock now. Mr Abbott singled out two major reasons why the G4 fleet have needed repairs so early on. First, the design is brand new. “People were learning as they built the vessels because these are not standard off-the-shelf designs; they are very unique. We knew we were going to have some teething problems,” Mr Abbott said.
Second, while the vessels were built in China’s Hudong Zhonghua Shipyard, ACL wanted to use European manufacturers for the main components, “because if something breaks down I want to pick up the spare parts in Europe and not wait weeks to get it delivered from Asia”, Mr Abbott explained. The problem was that, while those components were from European companies, many were built under licence in Asia. “There was too much low-quality production and some of the components were not of the high standards we had expected,” Mr Abbott commented. The shipping line has replaced as many parts as possible with components made in Europe.
But despite these problems, Mr Abbott said that 2018 is the year when “we finally have everything working properly.” The full fleet will be in operation for the first time in two years.
Another matter will also help ACL with its service: from mid-January this year Sweden’s Gothenburg port has been converted from a direct call to a weekly dedicated container feeder service between the port and Antwerp. ACL is using public feeders between the other Swedish ports and Hamburg/Bremerhaven. For Swedish roro cargo, ACL has set up a relay service using the Grimaldi Euromed vessel between Wallhamn and Antwerp.
Mr Abbott explained that due to ongoing issues between the terminal operator and labour union, inflexible berthing times and upward-spiralling costs, ACL had been experiencing significant delays of up to 12 hours and more, having a knock-on impact on the rest of its service string.
“Due to the combination of terminal problems at Gothenburg and other ports and ship repairs, our schedule went from being on time every week to very irregular, with lots of dropped port calls,” he said. But he said that the change from a direct call to a feeder service and the deployment of the full G4 fleet in normal operation, “will bring back the old ACL reliability to customers who have been patiently waiting for us to get our act together.”
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