Maersk Line is waiving demurrage and detention charges on shipments affected by a system outage that followed a cyber attack late last month.
In a global advisory dated July 12, Maersk Line said it recognizes the disturbance caused by the outage to clients’ businesses and will “waive Demurrage and Detention during the period when the system outage impacted our ability to release your cargo.”
It said, “In most places this period covers June 27-July 9, but there may be local variations based on when the containers were made available for import release.”
On June 27, Maersk was one of many companies infected by ransomware Petya, which led to the carrier’s IT systems shutting down across multiple sites and select business units. This resulted in the non-availability of some services and shipping documents and delays in the release of cargoes.
In the Philippines, the development meant the manual processing of affected Maersk Line and MCC shipments. Manual processing was, however, halted by the Bureau of Customs on July 7 after the agency confirmed that manifests, which previously could not be sent, could again be accessed.
READ: BOC halts manual processing of Maersk Line, MCC cargoes
On its July 12 update, Maersk said the company is “steadily getting closer to business as normal”, noting that its customers are now using its systems in full, and that customer service teams may again be contacted.
Maersk reassured those concerned about booking new shipments that it is able to do so through “booking channels and main customer service lines.”
It said it was “fully up-to-date” with short-term quotations requested by clients, and that it would “honor all rates communicated and have retroactively reflected those agreements for the shipments in our custody.”
The carrier noted it is also progressing on issuing invoices that will be sent to customers with an EDI link. Invoices on My.Maerskline.com under MyFinance have been available since July 11 although “local variances may occur and the distribution of invoices will take place over the coming days.”
For imports, the delivery process continues to be operational, but that “the experience is slow in some locations due to manual processing,” the carrier said.
“We are working hard on improving within this week as we switch to automated solutions.”
Tracking on My.Maerskline.com is also now fully up-to-date while maerskline.com, where clients can find guidance on planning shipments, is live again.
