update on sea port congestion
As reported earlier, the port of Yantian in the southern Chinese metropolis of Shenzhen had to close for a fortnight due to a Corona outbreak. The effects are more serious than after the closure of the Suez Canal: containers stand for up to 23 days instead of being loaded onto ships. In Yantian/Shenzhen, 10% of Chinese export goods are normally loaded. So Shenzhen is perhaps the most important trans-shipment centre of globalisation. In the last two weeks, 298 container ships with a capacity of over three million containers were unable to call at Shenzhen. Over 357,000 TEU’s could not be loaded.
In the meantime, port operations could be resumed, but the ramp-up continues (currently about 70%).
In Germany, too, the seaports, especially Hamburg, are completely overloaded. Maersk, for example, reports that Hamburg will not be called at for the next four weeks and the cargoes will be unloaded in Bremerhaven instead.
The bottleneck in southern China is putting even more strain on the already very tense sea freight situation. The same applies to the sometimes massive traffic jams at the ports. There will therefore be further delays. Massive space problems unfortunately continue to be the order of the day, and as a serious consequence there will be further price increases in freight traffic.
Hapag Lloyd made an interesting comment. Normally, Hapag Lloyd moves about 80,000 TEUs (20′ box containers) a week from Asia. At present, however, they are overbooked by up to 15 times! The imbalance is far too great! On average, container ships have to wait 1 to 1 ½ days for clearance, now it is more than 3 days on average! The average container turnaround has also increased significantly. Before the crisis, it took around 50 days for a container to be ready for a next tour. Today we are at 60 days!
