Colombo Port
is experiencing a surge in transshipment container volumes as it emerges as a
transit point in the short term for major shipping lines to reroute their
vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, a move opted to avoid disruption to
shipments following the recent attacks on vessels in the Red Sea.
According to
Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), with the problems in Red Sea, more ships are
calling in Colombo.
“Instead of going to Suez Canal via Red
Sea, they are taking the longer route around Africa, and they got to pass
Colombo on this route. In fact, we have witnessed a growth in volumes,†Sri
Lanka Port Authority (SLPA) Chairman Keith D. Bernard was quoted by Sri Lankan
Media reports.
Container
volumes handled by the SLPA-owned terminal has seen a growth of around 80
percent in recent days following the increased attacks on commercial vessels
plying the Red Sea recently. Earlier, one particular terminal owned by SLPA did
about 5000 TEUs per day and now it has gone up to about 8000 TEUs.
Before the diversions started on Red Sea in
mid-December, the Port of Colombo reported a decline in transshipment volumes
and overall container throughput in both October and November last year. During the 11-month period ending
in November last year, the Port recorded marginal growth of 0.04 percent in
container throughput reaching 6.3 million TEUs, as per official data.
Jan 10
The Port of
Colombo is targeting around 7 million TEUs in container volumes this year after
handling an estimated 6.9 million TEUS in 2023, up from 6.86 million TEUs in
2022. “Our capacity is about 8 million TEUs. With the new East Container
Terminal coming into semi operations this year, we will have about 8.5 million
TEUs in terms of capacity. So, we are looking at around 7 million TEUs for this
year,†he said
Although, Port
of Colombo may be benefiting from the current crisis due to heightened
uncertainty and volatility, some industry players opined that these recent
gains are unlikely to be sustained in the long term. They cautioned that
Port of Colombo may end up losing some transshipment volumes , if the current
crisis on Red Sea is not settled.
“You can cut up
to two and half days, if you go directly south though Singapore, some shipping
lines have opted to do that, but it’s very volatile. Towards the end of last
year, the situation (on Red Sea) was reaching some kind of settlement and
they (main shipping lines) were trying to go through the Suez
Canal.
“However, it
changed again recently because there were couple of attacks. So, the shipping
lines are operating on short term plans and haven’t restructured services on a
long term basis. So, they may choose not to call Colombo this week, but an
additional call could come in next week based on the available cargo, it’s a
very volatile situation,†an industry player said.
Meanwhile, the
freight rates and space crunches are continuing to rise, further intensified by
the upcoming Chinese New Year. Many shipping lines have already announced 30
percent increase in freight rates with effect from 15 January of this month on
top of 40-50 percent increase in freight rates seen so far. Moving forward,
many shipping lines have announced another 1000 US dollars or 30 percent
increase for shipping goods in a 40-foot container from this month,
industry stakeholders said.