East Coast to West Coast Services Suspended - Western Australia

17 October 2022

To our Valued Client,

The West of Australia is serviced by 3 modes of transport (in order of volume
capacity) – Coastal Shipping, Rail, and Road 


Coastal Shipping: Recently, due to industry factors, the Shipping Lines have largely removed the Coastal Shipping services which has left an enormous gap in available East West capacity. That said, where an opportunity does present for CEVA to secure space on a vessel we will be doing just that.

Rail: Services continue to run, but the Rail have advised that they are already operating at 95%
capacity and are therefore not selling any additional space to customers above what they already
have (hence the gap created by the removal of Coastal Shipping cannot be absorbed by the finite
capacity offered on Rail). Fortunately CEVA is one of very few providers that have reasonable
weekly volume allocations on rail, but these need to be managed accordingly.


Road: CEVA is currently looking to deploy some regular road services in and out of WA in order to
assist customers in keeping vehicles moving via an alternate mode not regularly available in this
market. However, due to the high costs of running this service, the rates will be reflective.

CEVA is monitoring this situation daily to ensure we can continue to meet customer requirements in
a responsible way. That is, we prefer not to over commit and under deliver.
As such, we are in the unfortunate position whereby we need to stop taking East – West bookings
under our normal arrangements until 1 Nov 2022 so as to allow us to clear backlog created by the
removal of Coastal Shipping services. We will however (once established) be able to offer a limited
road service during this time.

Of course, should any Coastal capacity open up and / or we see our backlog clearing faster than
expected we will revise this position.

Finally, we apologise for the inconvenience that this situation imposes on our valued clients, but it is
unfortunately one which is not within our control. It has been a difficult decision but one made with
the view of providing service and transparency as opposed to selling a service we cannot meet and
disappointing the end user.