Congestion across Global Container Ports Again

An operational update from German carrier Hapag-Lloyd, highlighted the myriad congestion issues facing carriers and shippers around the world. Across key Chinese ports such as Ningbo, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, terminals are under pressure with yard and berth congestion thanks to ongoing covid measures and the typhoon season.

At other key Asian ports, yard density is reported hitting 80% in Singapore, and is higher still, at 85%, at South Korea’s top port, Busan.

Reports of delays at North America’s terminals have dominated shipping headlines throughout the pandemic and remain a cause for concern going into July with Hapag-Lloyd noting waiting times for berths are running upwards of 19 days at New York/New Jersey, while the queue off Savannah is approaching record levels with waiting times there in the region of seven to 10 days.

On the west coast, while the spotlight is off Los Angeles and Long Beach for once, Oakland is suffering, with the German carrier warning ships can wait from anywhere between seven to 27 days for a space to open up at Oakland International Container Terminal.

Drewry stated in a recent report “We estimate that effective containership capacity will be about 15% below potential this year, following on from a 17% reduction last year.”

Statistics analysed by Copenhagen-based Sea-Intelligence through to end May show that 9.8% of the global fleet was unavailable due to supply chain delays, down from a peak of 13.8% in January – and also down from 10.7% in April. However, shippers have been warned not to celebrate this improvement.

The level of capacity removed from the market in May 2022 is still higher than in 2020 and 2021.

“This means we are at the beginning of the peak season and the global fleet is already lacking more capacity, than was the case at the same point in time in 2021,” Sea-Intelligence warned.