Congestion at ports is everywhere.
How will this affect shippers / consignees? Will per diem, detention fees apply? Ask your forwarder when placing your booking. Why congestion at ports? Read JOC article below.
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We are passing along the content sourced through JOC, which shows disrupted schedules hitting Asia with port congestion.
Robert Sallons, managing director of Cheng Lie Navigation Co. (CNC Line), told JOC.com the congestion was affecting the ports of Incheon in Korea, Qingdao and Shanghai in China, Hong Kong and Cat Lai in Vietnam.
“We operate with a 21-day port rotation but lose up to 12 days in Manila alone, so by the time we get to Cat Lai we are already bumping into the next rotation. Wait times in Hong Kong are 18 to 36 hours. It means we are forced to lose one rotation every 21 days,” he said.
CNC Line was acquired by French line CMA CGM in 2007 and operates exclusively in Asia. With a throughput of 850,000 TEUs in 2013, the line is expecting to carry 1 million 20-foot containers this year. However, the improving business environment is causing problems.
“The container volumes are strong in intra-Asia, the fuel price is down and freight rates are stable. But we are having to spend more money on schedule recovery than before. On long haul Asia-Europe services carriers can recover schedules between ports, but that cannot be done in Asia where the transit times are so much shorter. So we have to increase speed or slide services,” he said.
Another option carriers use when faced with regular port delays is to add an additional vessel to a string, but Sallons said this was not possible with the current delays.
“Normally we would add a fifth ship to a four-ship string to buffer any delays, but shorter voyages mean it would not work even with an extra vessel. And because volumes are so strong, port omissions are no longer viable.”
Part of the problem at the big gateway ports is that larger ships bring in more containers and need to stay longer. Sallons said other issues being faced by the ports included dense fog in Korea and northern China, monsoon rain and regular typhoons in the Philippines, and poor terminal design. The ports of Keelung, Incheon, Cat Lai, and Hong Kong’s Kwai Chung have limited space and can not cope efficiently with increasing volumes.
“Cat Lai is smack in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City, and at the port of Manila containers have to be trucked in and out through the city, causing congestion.”
Manila’s port congestion worsened after the municipal government imposed a daytime truck ban in February in an attempt to clear the Philippine capital’s notorious gridlock. All it did was bring the port to a standstill while doing little to free up the streets.
Michel Azrak, general manager of CMA CGM Philippines, said the average dwell time for import cargo at the port of Manila was now 12 days.
“All the depots are full and apart from the empties, there are many laden containers that consignees have not picked up,” he said.
The Philippines Ports Authority this week ordered shippers with customs-cleared containers in the port to collect their boxes or they would be shipped out to the ports of Batangas and Subic.
“All the shipping lines are facing the same situation,” Azrak said. “We don’t expect an improvement for at least another four months because customers will all start receiving their Christmas orders and early next year the Chinese New Year rush will begin.”
Persistent congestion has also clogged major gateway ports in the U.S. and Europe, where it is raising a debate about whether it’s just peak-season volumes causing delays in import shipments or the inability of ports to handle the sharp growth in container ship sizes. Nearly half of all post-Panamax ships saw delays of 12 hours or more at North and South American ports in July, according to a recent study released by CargoSmart.
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