Using predictability to manage blank sailing disruption

Blank Sailings have long been part of the shipping cycle, but Drewry reports a 122% month-on-month increase in blank sailings across major East-West trades this month alone, double the withdrawn capacity compared with the previous period.

“Schedule information is the backbone of efficient port calls. But in volatile conditions, static Estimated Time of Arrivals (ETAs) become outdated almost immediately,” said Sjoerd de Jager, managing director and co-founder of PortXchange.

”If the industry wants to reduce waste, it needs to move from static planning to predictive, continuously updated coordination.”

Proactive planning

For ports, terminals and hinterland operators, the central issue, Mr de Jager said, is not just capacity reduction, but variability.

Even when overall capacity remains relatively stable, frequent adjustments to sailing schedules create cascading operational effects. Cancelled sailings compromise berth windows, delayed arrivals disrupt yard planning and therefore inland barge and rail connections fall out of sequence.

The result is idle assets, compressed peaks, underutilised labour and avoidable emissions.

Historically, estimated times of arrival have been treated as fixed reference points. In practice, they are often calculated once and adjusted, if at all, manually.

This approach struggles to reflect real-world conditions such as port congestion, lock restrictions, weather systems, water levels, or network knock-on effects.

”The spike in blank sailings is a reminder that volatility is no longer an exception to the rule. It has become a structural feature of the market,” said Mr de Jager.

”We cannot control blank sailings or geopolitical volatility, but we can control how intelligently we plan around them. The choice is simple: Absorb disruption or anticipate it. In today’s environment, resilience means anticipating volatility in supply chains and predictive coordination tools are becoming a critical success factor.”

As part of its portfolio of products, PortXchange has developed ETAPredictor, a custom-made, AI-based, predictive ETA solution.

Addressing low utilisation and high idle times, the programme recalculates ETAs in real time using vessel-level and network historical data.

Read our exclusive interview with PortXchange on how port digitalisation is shaping the future