Carriers fear weeks of critical delays
Congestion in North Europe’s major ports will reach “critical” levels over the next four weeks as container terminals try to work through the backlog of fully laden ships delayed by the six-day Suez Canal closure, shipping lines warn.
Hapag-Lloyd is expecting most services will miss one to two sailings, which will impact available capacity in the second quarter.
The effects in North Europe will impact mainly at the largest ports such as Rotterdam, Southampton, and Felixstowe, while there are manageable delays in Scandinavia and some congestion in the Mediterranean.
With almost 20 weekly container shipping services on the Asia-Europe trade calling at multiple ports across Europe and Asia, recovering the lost schedules and limiting delays will be a mammoth task for carriers.
Most lines appear to working not to lose voyages, but it is likely that they may omit some port calls to keep weekly capacity up as much as possible.
We expect them to speed up, reroute ships or change port rotations to avoid congested ports, particularly if they need to look at alternatives to Rotterdam or the UK ports.
The easy availability of container equipment at China’s primary export hubs is likely to decline from mid-April into May, with the most popular 40’ dry boxes in particularly short supply.
By the time the Ever Given was freed and the Suez Canal reopened there were, almost 400 ships at anchor waiting to pass and more than two dozen had already diverted to sail around the southern tip of Africa.
Some lines have started taking online bookings again, but we expect that booking acceptance will be determined by port and equipment availability.
Despite the bad press, we are hopeful there will not be sustained impact on the extended supply chain, but shippers should expect some delays and equipment shortages at Asian ports to continue, simply because we missed two weeks getting equipment back.
Asian ports will feel the effects of the Suez disruption far more acutely, with the schedules affected later in the second quarter, which will make it even harder for carriers to get their schedules under control through May, June and even July.
To mitigate port delays, instead of completing a port rotation in Asia or Europe, carriers may consider offloading cargo at major hub ports and turning around early, leaving ships arriving a week later to collect the cargo and carry to its destination port.
Shippers can expect delays for export cargo both in Europe and Asia, with export cargo in the Mediterranean facing delays of “a week or two, while ports at the Asia end of the trade will start to feel the impact of ship delays from mid-May.
