Congestion at container ports around the world is hitting record highs. UK maritime consultancy Clarksons’ Container Port Congestion Index hit a new record on July 14, with 37.8 per cent of fleet capacity stuck in ports, according to its data, surpassing the peak recorded at the end of October 2021 and above the average of 31.5 per cent between 2016 and 2019.
The latest weekly report from Sea-Intelligence, a maritime Intelligence agency, warns: “There is still no solution to the non-maritime bottleneck, the main driver of supply and demand, which is not good for shippers.”
Meanwhile, containers are piling up at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach waiting to be shipped by rail. Truckers at California ports have just gone on strike. There are not enough truckers, and tens of thousands of containers are blocking ports on the WEST Coast of the US waiting for trains to reach their destinations, sea-Intelligence reports.
At the port of Los Angeles, 19,665 rail containers are waiting nine days or more. The port of Long Beach reported 13,819 rail containers stranded during the same period. More than 60 per cent of all containers waiting at these ports need to be shipped to their destinations by rail. MDS Transmodal estimates the total value of trade in goods within these rail containers at more than $1.54 billion.
“Rail containers continue to pile up at the port in record numbers,” said Noel Hacegaba, deputy executive director of administration and operations at the Port of Long Beach. We need to move these boxes to make more room and keep the port running.”
Global port congestion record high! More than $31 billion in cargo is stuck on the tracks inland and out of U.S. ports
In Europe, Hamburg and Bremerhaven ports were “paralysed” by strikes by port workers, sea-Intelligence said. “Hamburg’s port of Hamburg has deteriorated with ships with a capacity of nearly 200,000 TEU waiting to berth, suggesting that waiting times will be even longer in the coming weeks,” said Alex Charvalias, head of supply chain in-transit visibility at MarineTraffic.
News of industrial action continues to trickle in across Europe, most recently with British rail workers planning three strikes across the UK in the coming month.
Meanwhile, Asia’s monsoon and typhoon seasons are already underway, which will also have an impact on ship delays.
As of July 13, about 460,000 TEUs were loaded on ships waiting outside ports on the East Coast and 180,000 were stacked on ships outside ports on the West Coast, according to MarineTraffic.
Global port congestion record high! More than $31 billion in cargo is stuck on the tracks inland and out of U.S. ports
Globally, the nominal value of containerized goods increased by nearly 9 percent between 2019 and 2021, according to MDS Transmodal data. But Antonella Teodoro, a senior consultant at MDS Transmodal, explained that given that the average annual growth rate in the previous two years was within 0.7 percent, it is reasonable to believe that the main reason for the estimated increase in the last two years is higher freight rates.”
Overall, the total value of trade in goods stranded at sea is about $30 billion, according to MDS Transmodal data.
In addition, the Kuehne + Nagel platform publishes the “Global Disruption Indicator”, which calculates the cumulative waiting time for teUs (teU) in days based on container-ship capacity at 12 hot ports around the world.
The TEU waiting days (TWD) metric is calculated on the basis that, for example, 12 days for a ship with a capacity of 10,000TEU equals 120,000 TWD. Currently, the indicator stands at 9.8 million TWD, and Kuehne + Nagel explained that the supply chain will return to normal only when the figure falls below 1 million TWD.