From Weekly Market Pulse published on 22 Oct: Global port congestion rebounded after the sharp retreat a week ago, with rising volumes after the Golden Week holidays in China pushing up the workload at Chinese terminals. Most of the backlog has been cleared at Chinese main ports with delays at Qingdao, Ningbo and Shenzhen down to within 1 day but Shanghai still faces berthing delays of up to 2 days although that is also down from a peak of up to 5-6 days in September. US East Coast ports still
Global container port congestion has eased noticeably in the past week, with Chinese ports gradually clearing the backlog of vessels that has built up around its main ports at the end of September. Shanghai remains highly congested with berthing delays of up to 4 days but the other key ports including Ningbo, Shenzhen and Qingdao have managed to bring down the average vessel waiting times to less than 1 day. In the US East Coast, Hurricane Milton made landfall on 10 October but most of the main
The International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) announced on 3 October a tentative agreement on wages and extended the Master Contract until 15 January 2025 to negotiate all other outstanding issues, ending the dockworkers’ strike that started at midnight on 1 October. Vessel congestion at US East Coast ports spiked to a high of 460,000 teu on 4 October but is clearing up quickly after all of the affected ports resumed vessel operations by the en
US East Coast ports were shut down from 1 October 2024 with ramifications that could be far more serious than all previous port strikes in the US, including the 1971 ILWU strike that lasted 130 days, the 1977 ILA selective strike that lasted for 57 days, the 2002 PMA lockout of the ILWU that lasted for 11 days and the 2014-2015 ILWU work slowdowns that persisted for almost 5 months. Congestion at US East Coast ports has picked up last week ahead of the planned strike, with Savannah, Charleston
Aggregated container volumes handled at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach reached 1.87m teu in August, the second highest monthly throughput ever recorded at the main Pacific Southwest (PSW) gateway port just shy of the 1.92m teu peak handled during the peak of the COVID pandemic in May 2021. The current volumes already exceed the 1.67m teu handled in January 2022 when congestion at the San Pedro Bay ports reached a record high of 740,000 teu, but there is still few signs of any serious co
A coastwise strike at US East and Gulf Coast ports now looks certain to start on 1 October 2024. The 14 ports controlled by the ILA handled 28.4m teu of containerised cargo in 2023 or almost 550,000 teu each week. For each week that the strike continues, it would hold up 1.7% of the global containership fleet, with an indefinite strike expected to affect over 4.5m teu of the fleet, accounting for 15% of the total containership capacity. Global port congestion has eased over the past week but th
Severe weather across East Asian ports last week have resulted in increased congestion at ports across China and sailing cancellations. Delays remain extensive across all main Chinese ports with waiting times at Shanghai, Ningbo, Qingdao and Yantian reaching up to 3 days with vessel bunching continuing to cause bottlenecks. US congestion remains concentrated on the US East Coast with berth utilization still high especially for larger ships with delays of up to 3 days reported at New York, Norfo
Global port congestion remains elevated with overall congestion remaining at a 2 year high. Berthing delays remain acute at the main Chinese ports with Shanghai, Ningbo, Yantian and Qingdao experiencing delays of up to 2 days due to high vessel traffic and bunching of arrivals. Although the congestion at Southeast Asian hubs have improved, ships arriving at Singapore, Port Klang and Tanjung Pelepas are still experiencing delays of 1 to 2 days. Although the planned dockworker strike in India has
There is no material increase in port congestion at North America West Coast ports over the past week despite the labour stoppage by Canadian rail workers following the lockout of over 9,000 workers on 22 August before the government called for binding arbitration with no further labour stoppages during the arbitration process paving the way for railway operations to resume on 26 August. Ships faced berthing delays at Vancouver of up to 5 days while the PNW ports of Seattle and Tacoma faced sev
Port congestion remains elevated through the past week with North Asia and South America experiencing the most severe delays. Delays at Chinese ports have remained acute, with Ningbo and Shanghai seeing especially high levels of congestion. The explosion at the port of Ningbo on 9 August on board the 6,588 teu YM MOBILITY has affected operations at the Ningbo Beilun Second Container Terminal (NBSCT) but the port remains open despite various erroneous reports on the closure of Ningbo port. NBSCT