Trouble Begets Trouble: Port Jams Claim Capacity

Containership capacity equivalent to 12.5 percent of the global fleet is unavailable due to delays caused by congestion in ports, despite the huge increase in the amount of deployed tonnage.

An analysis of vessel delays and capacity deployments by Sea-Intelligence showed that the amount of additional capacity required to meet demand is being outstripped by the amount of capacity being held up out of service as it awaits berthing slots.

“The impact in late 2020 and (the) first half of 2021 was followed by a small improvement in spring,” said chief executive Alan Murphy. “However, neither did that improvement solve the issues, nor did it last very long.”

On the transpacific, this means that despite the injection of significantly more vessel capacity, the cargo carrying capacity on a roundtrip basis has declined by 20 percent when looking at year on year and 10 percent when looking at the annual average over the past two years.

Source: Lloyd’s List