European international shipping ports are congested, with containers piling up like mountains (Attention to shippers and freight forwarders)

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2025-01-14 12:11

Recently, several major ports in Europe have been extremely busy, with containers piling up like mountains and ships queuing to enter the ports. Some ports in Northern Europe, such as Antwerp, Rotterdam, and Bremen, have become a sea of containers. The density of the stacks at the docks is frightening, with some areas even reaching 95%!

Due to port congestion, two major companies, Maersk and HMM, have recently issued notices stating that the voyages on the Asia-Europe routes will be adjusted, and some routes have even skipped ports altogether. Antwerp Port has even directly suspended barge transportation, which is quite troublesome.

Worse still, shipping companies have canceled some scheduled voyages, resulting in a large accumulation of empty containers and export containers at Northern European ports. Additionally, those containers bound for Russia that are blocked by customs are also taking up a lot of space at the docks. Maersk mentioned in this week's Asia-Pacific market update that due to the disruption in operations at European ports, there is immense pressure on the maritime route network. Delays in Northern Europe directly affect the shipping schedule back to the Asia-Pacific region.

Global shipping schedule reliability is also in jeopardy. Sea-Intelligence recently released a global liner performance report, showing that as of April 2022, global shipping schedule reliability is still hovering at a historical low. The reliability in April decreased by 1.3% month-on-month and by 4.7% year-on-year, with an overall reliability of only 34.4%. This means that the shipping schedule reliability for each month in the first four months of 2022 was lower than in 2021.

Shanghai Port is regaining its vitality.

The good news is that the daily container throughput at Shanghai Port has rebounded to 95.3% of normal levels. The average daily throughput at Shanghai Port has reached 120,000 TEUs, achieving a positive growth of 1.9% in the first four months of this year, with a total of 15.35 million TEUs completed, maintaining its position as the world's number one. Recently, the Shanghai Export Container Freight Index (SCFI) has seen two consecutive increases. Although the freight rate on the West Coast of the United States has hit a new low this year, as Shanghai gradually lifts restrictions, once work and shipments accelerate, transportation demand is expected to rise rapidly. A wave of rush shipments may emerge from the backlog of goods, and the container shipping market is expected to stop declining and rebound.

Overall, the congestion problem at European ports is unlikely to be resolved in the short term, so everyone should be prepared for a long-term response. I hope Shanghai Port can quickly return to normal levels and bring more convenience to everyone.

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